Culture, Conflict and the

Military in Colonial South Asia

This book offers diverse and original perspectives on South Asia’s

imperial military history. Unlike prevailing studies, the chapters in the
volume emphasize both the vital role of culture in framing imperial
military practice and the multiple cultural effects of colonial military
service and engagements. The volume spans from the early East India
Company period through to the Second World War and India’s inde-
pendence, exploring themes such as the military in the field and at
leisure, as well as examining the effects of imperial deployments in
South Asia and across the British Empire. Drawing extensively on new
archival research, the book integrates previously disparate accounts of
imperial military history and raises new questions about culture and
operational practice in the colonial Indian Army.
This work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of modern
South Asian history, war and strategic studies, military history, the
British Empire, as well as politics and international relations.

Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor in the Department of

History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India, and Global
Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He has
published widely on the British-Indian Army and counter-insurgency
in Asia.

Gavin Rand is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Green-

wich, London, UK. He has published on the recruiting and ideologies
of the colonial Indian Army as well as on imperial military administra-
tion and governance. He is currently writing a cultural history of the
Indian Army in the colonial period.
War and Society in South Asia
Series Editors: Douglas M. Peers, Professor of History and Dean of
Arts, University of Waterloo, Canada; Kaushik Roy, Guru Nanak
Chair Professor, Department of History, Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, West Bengal, India and Global Fellow, Peace Research
Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway; and Gavin Rand, Principal Lecturer
in History, University of Greenwich, London, UK

The War and Society in South Asia series integrates and interrogates
social, cultural and military histories of South Asia. The series explores
social and cultural histories of South Asia’s military institutions as well
as the impacts of conflict and the military on South Asian societies,
polities and economies. The series reflects the varied and rich histories
that connect warfare and society in South Asia from the early modern
period through the colonial era to the present. By situating the histo-
ries of war and society in wider contexts, the series seeks to encourage
greater understanding of the multidimensional roles played by war-
fare, soldiers and military institutions in South Asia’s history.

IN THIS SERIES
Culture, Conflict and the Military in Colonial South Asia
Edited by Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
Culture, Conflict
and the Military in
Colonial South Asia

Edited by Kaushik Roy

and Gavin Rand
First published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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Contents

List of contributorsvii
Acknowledgementsix

Introduction 1
KAUSHIK ROY AND GAVIN RAND

1 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 22

IAN F. W. BECKETT

2 Sepoys and sebundies: the role of regular

and paramilitary forces in the construction
of colonialism in Bengal, c. 1765–c. 1820 45
JAMES LEES

3 Intelligence and strategic culture: alternative

perspectives on the first British invasion
of Afghanistan 64
HUW J. DAVIES

4 ‘At Ease, Soldier’: social life in the cantonment 85

ERICA WALD

5 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst

for blood’: archive, memory and W. H. Russell’s
(re)making of the Indian Mutiny 104
DOUGLAS M. PEERS
vi Contents
6 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan: culture
and combat on the North-West Frontier 131
GAVIN RAND

7 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897:

civil–military tensions and Pukhtun resistance
on the North-West Frontier of British India 157
SAMEETAH AGHA

8 The Indian Army in defeat: Malaya, 1941–2 183

KAUSHIK ROY

9 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 212
CAT WILSON

10 War and Indian military institutions: the emergence

of the Indian Military Academy 239
VIPUL DUTTA

11 ‘Home’ front: Indian soldiers and civilians

in Britain, 1939–45 258
FLORIAN STADTLER

Index277
Contributors

Sameetah Agha is Associate Professor of History at Pratt Institute,

Brooklyn, New York, USA. Her teaching and research areas include
modern world history, imperialism and colonialism, and military
history with an emphasis on Central and South Asia and Afghani-
stan. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the Pukhtun
Revolt of 1897 on the North-West Frontier of British India.
Ian F. W. Beckett is Professor of Military History at the University
of Kent, England, United Kingdom. A Fellow of the Royal His-
torical Society, he was Chairman of the Council of the Army
Records Society (2001–14). His publications include Wolseley and
Ashanti: The Asante War Journals and Correspondence of Major
General Sir Garnet Wolseley, 1873–74 (2009), The Victorians at
War (2003) and, as editor, Citizen Soldiers and the British Empire,
1837–1902 (2012). He is completing a study of the politics of com-
mand in the late Victorian army.
Huw J. Davies is Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College
London and is an expert on Napoleonic Warfare. In 2012, he pub-
lished Wellington’s Wars: The Making of a Military Genius and has
also written on intelligence, diplomacy and command in Modern
Asian Studies and the Journal of Military History, among others. At
present, he is working on intelligence and strategy during the First
Afghan War (1839–42).
Vipul Dutta holds a doctorate from the King’s India Institute, King’s
College London, United Kingdom. His research interests lie in the
fields of military history, military sociology of South Asia, civil–
military relations and the role of the Indian Army in the First and
Second World Wars.
viii Contributors
James Lees is a Research Advisor in the Grants and Innovation Office
at Karlstad University, Sweden. He holds a doctorate in British
Imperial/South Asian history from King’s College London. His
research examines power relations and bureaucratic culture among
the European civil servants of the East India Company state in late
eighteenth-century Bengal.
Douglas M. Peers is Dean of Arts and Professor of History at the Uni-
versity of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He has published widely on
colonial South Asia and especially on South Asian armies and state
formation. He co-edited with Nandini Gooptu, India and the Brit-
ish Empire in The Oxford History of the British Empire: Compan-
ion Series (2012).
Florian Stadtler is Senior Lecturer in Global Literature at the Uni-
versity of Exeter, United Kingdom. Previously Research Fellow
at The Open University, he has researched and published on the
South Asian community and its historical legacy in pre-1950 Brit-
ain. He has also worked on South Asian literature and films and
is the author of Fiction, Film and Indian Popular Cinema: Salman
Rushdie’s Novels and the Cinematic Imagination (2013). He is the
Reviews Editor of Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Con-
temporary Writing.
Erica Wald is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Goldsmiths, Uni-
versity of London, United Kingdom. She is the author of Vice in the
Barracks: Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India,
1780–1868 (2014) and has published on prostitution, health and
discipline in colonial India.
Cat Wilson was awarded a doctorate in 2012 by Hull University, Eng-
land, United Kingdom, for her research which examined Winston
Churchill’s depiction of the war in the Far East as presented in his
six-volume memoir The Second World War. She has presented her
research both nationally and internationally, and is a member of
the British Commission for Military History as well as the British
Empire at War Research Group.
Acknowledgements

This volume contains papers first presented at the symposia hosted in

London by the University of Greenwich and in Kolkata by Jadavpur
University. The symposia were made possible by a British Academy
International Partnership and Mobility Award, and we thank the Brit-
ish Academy for their support. We also want to thank colleagues and
students at Greenwich and Jadavpur, all the participants at the sympo-
sia and, most of all, each of the contributors to the volume.
Introduction
Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand

Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colo-

nial rule in South Asia. Even in peacetime, the military was the larg-
est drain on the colonial exchequer, typically employing more than
200,000 troops through most of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies. The Indian Army1 also played a crucial role in projecting and
asserting British imperial power beyond South Asia, most obviously
during the global wars of the twentieth century, in which millions of
Indians served.2 These conflicts did much to shape South Asia’s engage-
ments with, and place in, the emergent postcolonial world order, just
as war and the military informed metropolitan engagements with, and
understandings of, the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century.
In South Asia, as in Europe and beyond, war was one of the principal
vectors for the movements of people, and ideas, through the eight-
eenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Indian Army occupied an anomalous position during the colo-
nial period. While the armed forces were an essential foundation of
colonial authority, the power of the imperial military rested largely
on those South Asians enlisted in Britain’s colonial armies, as well
as on those who provided the labour and the logistics that sustained
these formations. This truth, which historians were slow to properly
recognize, places the military at the very centre of South Asia’s colo-
nial history: while violence underwrote colonial authority the appara-
tus of imperial coercion was comprised, supplied and provisioned by
Indians. War and conflict were, of course, major drivers of historical
change across the subcontinent but so too were the effects of military
expenditure, of recruiting patterns and the legacies of military service.
Like soldiers everywhere, military service helped to shape the social
and cultural identities of recruits in South Asia where imperial institu-
tions drew on – and in some cases transformed – identities rooted in
region, tribe, caste, gender and family. The complementary, though
2 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
very different, histories of enlisting and recruiting illuminate the mul-
tiple and wide-reaching effects of colonial military service. While few
Indians joined colonial forces for patriotic reasons, regular pay, pen-
sions and gratuities did attract and retain recruits. Colonial recruiting
drew from a pre-existing Indian military labour market, and most of
those who enlisted for colonial service could probably lay claim to
existing traditions of military service. For many such groups, military
service linked, and gave shape to, professional, regional, religious and
familial identities. The conjuncture of these identities, and their signifi-
cance for colonial military service, is reflected in the notion of izzat, an
Urdu term that may be translated as honour, prestige or reputation.3
If izzat, referring to a tradition of military service, and to the cultural
valorization of certain forms of martial masculinity, is relevant for
understanding enlisting patterns and, perhaps, combat motivation and
effectiveness, it is also the case that colonial military service helped to
give these identities new shape and significance.4 As colonial power
was consolidated and extended through the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, Kshatriya (and other) traditions became embed-
ded in the military infrastructure of the Raj. Though some martial tra-
ditions predated colonial recruiting, the scale and duration of the Raj’s
demand for military labour helped to incentivize and also to concretize
the martial identities of various South Asian communities, including
the Sikhs, Gurkhas and Pathans. Having discovered the ‘martial races’
colonial recruiters helped to systematize their identities and a genre of
ethnographic writing – the familiar ‘martial race discourse’ – devel-
oped to substantiate and document this heritage.5 These were largely
‘invented traditions’: though many Nepalese and Punjabis undertook
military service (among other forms of émigré labour) long before the
British, the particular forms of ‘martial heritage’ enshrined in colonial
recruiting handbooks, like ideas of honour and shame on which they
depended, were hybridized, reflecting the co-production of new identi-
ties shaped by both pre-existing social, economic and political forces
and by the transformative effects of colonial expansion.6 The effects
were, nevertheless, far-reaching and long-standing: Nepalese Gurkhas
remain the premier infantry of present-day British and Indian armies,
while the Sikhs dominate the combatant arms of the Indian and Paki-
stan armies, where the regimental structure of the British-officered
colonial-era army more or less persists.7
While izzat was rooted in pre-colonial social structures and though
it retained significance for those who volunteered for colonial service,
our understandings of izzat have been profoundly transformed by
colonial recruiting not least because our access to the idea is deeply,
 Introduction 3
and problematically, mediated by colonial sources. Though rich archi-
val collections document the history of the military in colonial South
Asia, most of the sources we have are of colonial origin. As the vast
majority of South Asia’s colonial soldiers were illiterate, there are few
indigenous accounts of colonial military service. Our access to, and
understanding of, the mentalities of South Asian recruits are inevitably
partial and heavily mediated by colonial perspectives. While there is
ample evidence which shows that traditions of military service rested
on and helped to shape prevailing cultural ideas about masculinity,
identity and community, there is equally ample evidence to suggest
that these ideas were transformed during the colonial period. The
stylized representations of India’s martial races which circulated in
the imperial press and were codified in popular writings during the
interwar period reflect the hybrid cultures of colonial military ser-
vice much more than they describe the social reality of colonial South
Asia.8 A critical history of izzat – sensitive to the particular and shift-
ing meanings of the term across different contexts – could help to illu-
minate not only the motivations and perspectives of those sepoys and
sowars who enlisted in the imperial military but also help us to trace
how these men, and their actions, shaped events and ideas which had
much wider pan-imperial effects.9
If the martial race discourse, in Edward Said’s terms, ‘Orientalized’
izzat, then a careful reading of colonial understandings of izzat may
reveal much about the interlocking and mutually constitutive worlds
of culture, conflict and the military in the making of colonial South
Asia.10 As this example suggests, the imperial military played a vital
role in spreading and sustaining colonial rule and in shaping the expe-
riences, opportunities and outlooks of men and women across South
Asia. While much remains to be done to understand the operational
history of the Indian Army, we must also look beyond the battlefield
to examine the many and varied ways in which the imperial military
helped to shape the connections which made contemporary South Asia
and its place in the world.

* * *
As the introductory discussion and the following chapters make clear,
recent works on the Indian Army confirm the prescience of Clive Dew-
ey’s 1996 prediction that historians were ‘waking up to the fact that
military factors have to be taken into account across the whole spread
of South Asian history’. However, despite a number important works,
the promise of what Dewey called ‘the New Military History of South
Asia’ remains only partially fulfilled.11 Much military history – of
4 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
South Asia and elsewhere – remains largely disconnected from wider
historiographical debates.12 Ironically, though perhaps not coinciden-
tally, the isolation of imperial military history has persisted despite
the proliferation of scholarship on empire in the wake of the so-called
imperial turn. The reinvigoration of imperial history and historiogra-
phy, which might have been expected to complement emerging trends
in South Asian military history, seems, in fact, to have perpetuated or
even exacerbated methodological and interpretive divisions between
military and non-military historians. In some ways, it appears that the
‘new imperial history’ has absorbed the wider momentum which might
have animated the ‘new military history’ of South Asia. Despite an
enormous proliferation of scholarship, the histories of war, and of the
institutions raised to wage imperial wars, remain isolated from much
of the work produced following the ‘imperial turn’.13 Stephen Howe’s
admirable The New Imperial Histories Reader – the cover of which
depicts ‘An Incident during the Sikh Wars’ – dedicates just eight of
more than 450 pages to discussion of the place of warfare and violence
in colonial historiography.14 Though specific conflicts and moments of
colonial violence are discussed elsewhere in the Reader, the imperial
histories of military institutions – and of warfare itself – appear only as
adjuncts to wider histories. Howe’s volume reflects the nature of much
recent scholarship: while new imperial histories have rightly called
attention to the violence of colonial rule, there are still few detailed
reconstructions of the individuals and institutions through which vio-
lence was mobilized and deployed. For all the promise of new military
and new imperial historiography, the boundaries between cultural and
military histories have proved frustratingly resolute.
With a view to breaking down some of these barriers – or at least
identifying their contours – this edited volume revisits the terrain
mapped by Dewey, and others, in the 1990s. The eleven chapters col-
lected here illuminate, in different ways, the varied and diverse strands
that comprise the military history of colonial South Asia. Some of the
chapters revisit and extend debates on familiar subjects, while others
open up new subjects and suggest novel approaches and interpreta-
tions. The chapters range across the colonial period as well as across
and beyond South Asia. They chart the emergence, extension and con-
solidation of colonial military power and examine key episodes in the
defence of that power, both within and without the subcontinent. Col-
lectively, they demonstrate that India’s military histories extend across
the British Empire and range far beyond the battlefield. Several of the
chapters complicate crude colonial/nationalist binaries, showing the
crucial role of South Asians in the expansion of colonial rule as well
 Introduction 5
as the important role of war and the military in shaping trajectories
towards independence. Both colonial and nationalist historiographies
have failed to adequately account for the roles played by soldiers and
followers in the expansion and contraction of imperialism in South
Asia. In offering an overview of the various ways in which culture
and conflict shaped the history of colonialism in South Asia, this vol-
ume seeks to encourage further works to explore the wider registers of
imperial military history.
More than any other colonial institution, the Indian Army played
a crucial role in shaping the interconnected histories of colony and
metropole. The breadth and diversity of the extant literature are
reflected in the historiographical overview presented in the opening
chapter by Ian Beckett. The first histories of the imperial military were
produced by scholar-bureaucrats concerned to legitimize and valorize
the Indian Army’s role in consolidating colonial rule in the subconti-
nent. Nevertheless, as Beckett notes and as several of the other chap-
ters in this volume demonstrate, colonial historiography remains an
important seam within the wider literature, not least because the early
histories are often rich in contemporary material. Though inevitably
partial, they are for this reason invariably valuable in illuminating the
colonial context from which they emerged. Drawing on wider meth-
odological shifts, recent works have offered much more varied, and
critical, readings: the unreconstructed ‘drum and buttons’ school of
the early twentieth century, which depicted colonial triumphs and the
glory of various regiments, has been displaced by the emergence of
social history, leading academic historians to mine the history of the
Indian Army to explore the wider historical forces which shaped the
history of the subcontinent and its peoples. These shifts, which also
reflected the emergence of the so-called war and society school, asked
new questions of imperial military histories. So, too, did the emergence
of ‘Subaltern Studies’ in the 1980s although, as David Omissi noted,
the subalternists showed relatively little interest in the history of those
Indians who allied themselves with colonial authority – a fact which is
doubly unfortunate, given the crucial role played by the sepoys and the
wealth of resources which document their contribution.15 Much more
work has been done, as Beckett’s chapter indicates, on ‘the mutiny (and
rebellion)’. This is partly, perhaps, because 1857 – like the other ‘muti-
nies’ addressed in the literature – is more easily accommodated in anal-
yses which emphasize resistance as a key condition of ‘subalternity’.
The enormous wealth of literary and cultural responses to ‘the mutiny’
has also ensured that the Indian Army registers a presence on schol-
ars in other disciplines, particularly in the wake of the cultural turn.
6 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
Unsurprisingly, then, works by historical geographers, literary schol-
ars and anthropologists all feature in Beckett’s extensive notes. The
works surveyed here – which chart the development of new under-
standings of South Asian society as well as the evolution of strategic
concerns in the late nineteenth century and the global deployments
of the Indian Army in the conflicts of the twentieth century – confirm
the wider reaches of imperial military historiography. Alongside these,
more recent operational histories have been influenced by organiza-
tional studies, with scholars focusing on the institutional and logistical
adaptations undertaken during the conflict. As several of the chapters
in this collection indicate, assessments of combat effectiveness and
battlefield techniques are now informed by much wider readings than
those offered in colonial accounts. As Beckett’s chapter makes clear,
the historiography of the Indian Army reflects the military’s key role in
the history of colonial South Asia, as well as the impact of wider his-
toriographical developments on understandings of that role. Beckett’s
chapter sets the context for those that follow and provides an instruc-
tive bibliographical guide for those beginning research on the military
history of colonial South Asia.
If recent works on the expansion of colonial authority in India have
complicated the crude and essentialist accounts of colonial scholar-
administrators, the military’s role in the expansion of British authority
remains central to understandings of the nature of the colonial state.
While Cambridge and nationalist schools proffered alternative views
of collaboration and domination, it is clear that the expansion of colo-
nial rule depended on the mobilization and reliability of large numbers
of Indians. Philip Stern has argued that far from absent-mindedness,
the British pursued a clear objective of establishing a ‘New Rome’ in
India from the seventeenth century. First, they established their con-
trol over the Arabian Sea and then, combining European institutional
forms with indigenous labour, the East India Company slowly but
steadily moved inland. The Company’s calculated interference in the
layered and divisible sovereignties of post-Mughal polities continued
apace through the eighteenth century.16 While the imperial military
played a vital role in this expansion, the precise nature of the Bengal
Army’s role has often been misunderstood and, as James Lees shows in
chapter two, it has also perhaps been somewhat exaggerated.17 Exam-
ining the growth of colonial power in the Bengal Presidency during the
second half of the eighteenth century, Lees makes clear that the Bengal
Army was scarcely involved in counter-insurgency operations during
the process of colonial expansion. Challenging the assumption that
the regular army was the key institution for securing British influence
 Introduction 7
within colonial territory, Lees shows that the consolidation of coloni-
alism depended in large part on ill-organized and at times ill-equipped
paramilitaries. While the Bengal Army remained concentrated at var-
ious strategic sites along the border, especially in Awadh, until the
early nineteenth century policing duties were typically undertaken by
local irregulars, partly because of the fiscal limits on the colonial state
and partly because the structures and strictures of discipline necessary
to control a dispersed force were absent throughout the eighteenth
century. As Lees shows, anxieties over the competence of lower-rank-
ing officials – as well as over the loyalty and effectiveness of men in
arms – helped to encourage a policy which deliberately limited the
military forces which were at the disposal of local colonial officials.
While policing duties thus fell on irregular and paramilitary forces, the
regular Bengal Army was reserved for deployments against the more
substantial competing military powers, notably the Marathas in cen-
tral and west India and the Sikhs on the Awadh–Rohilkhand border.
The powerlessness of lower-ranking colonial administrators reflected
a pragmatic response to the internal and external limits on the mili-
tary power of the emerging colonial state. Only after the collapse of
the Maratha Confederacy in 1805 could the colonial authorities detail
significant military assets for internal policing and only then was the
Bengal Army dispersed in order to take on more of this kind of work.
The distribution of forces described in familiar works on the early
nineteenth century reflects the operation of the garrison state, not its
emergence.18 As Lees’s chapter makes clear, the expansion of colonial
authority was a process shaped by the limits of colonial power as
much as by its range.
Similar limits also shaped the colonial state’s engagements with
other subcontinental powers, as Huw Davies’s chapter on the First
Afghan War demonstrates. Challenging grand strategic analyses of the
war’s causes, Davies shows that imperial engagements with Afghani-
stan were shaped by three discrete intelligence networks – one centred
in London, one in Lahore and one in Calcutta – each of which reflected
alternative strategic cultures and priorities. Intelligence was routed to
London from networks coordinated in embassies across European
capitals. Commercial and strategic rivalries with Russia and particu-
larly the prospect of increased Russian influence in Europe assumed
greater importance through the late 1820s and early 1830s. In Lahore
and Calcutta, however, the East India Company was less concerned
with a Russian advance than with the threat posed by Ranjit Singh’s
Sikh Army. In seeking to exploit rivalries between the Sikhs and the
Afghans, Calcutta miscalculated the strength of the Afghan polity
8 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
and misread dubious intelligence from Tehran. Calcutta’s reading of
Afghan events was framed not only by metropolitans concerns related
to the Russian advance but also by Central and South Asian affairs.
Davies argues that Calcutta’s intelligence networks, and the prevailing
strategic culture in which intelligence was weighed, were dominated by
military men, and that this produced recurrent anxieties over threats
and, in turn, inclined the East India Company to seek military solu-
tions to political and strategic problems. With partial information and
limited understandings of Afghan politics, Calcutta proposed inter-
vention for its own reasons, but in so doing provided London with
an opportunity to pursue its own ends by the same means. In tracing
the differentiated inputs and cognitive dissonance which shaped the
decision to invade Afghanistan, Davies’s chapter highlights the influ-
ence of colonial culture on imperial decision-making and thus suggests
some of the limits of imperial intelligence systems. Like Lees, Davies
demonstrates how a more granular reading of colonial military history
can be used to throw light on the uneven and episodic expansion of
the Company state.
While military force played a vital role in the East India Company’s
expansion, one of the most significant limits on the Company’s mili-
tary power, and on the Raj which it preceded, was the financial burden
of raising and maintaining regular forces, particularly the European
troops who provided the ‘backbone’ of the Indian Army. European
troops were a considerable and a costly human resource for the colo-
nial state in India: each European soldier was four times costlier
than a sepoy, and Europeans were much more susceptible to disease
than were locally recruited sepoys and sowars. As Erica Wald’s chap-
ter makes clear, the health of the European soldiery was an impor-
tant concern for the military authorities and the Government of India.
However, while European soldiers were thought to play a vital role in
imperial military power, many regarded the European rank and file
as a degraded and loutish class apart, whose drunkenness and licen-
tiousness threatened to imperil the prestige of the European race. To
police these dangers, commanding officers exercised absolute power
to regulate the space inside the cantonment and to control the bodies
of the troops they commanded. Similarly strict control was established
over the Indian and European women living inside the cantonments.
As Wald has shown elsewhere, the regulation of space and the punish-
ment of those who transgressed reflected prevailing ideas about mas-
culinity and race in the colonial context.19
Exploring attitudes towards the rank and file by examining lei-
sure provision for soldiers during the mid-nineteenth century, Wald
 Introduction 9
illustrates the paucity of provision made for soldiers’ leisure, tracing
the development of scattered and limited attempts to ‘improve’ the
soldiery through the course of the nineteenth century and mapping
these against shifting understandings of the ‘ideal soldier’. If Welles-
ley’s vision of the uneducated (and a-political) soldier was gradually
supplanted by a more engaged, and recognizably national, ideal-type
in the British Army at home, European recruits for the imperial mili-
tary continued to occupy an inferior position. Beyond ready, and
substantial, access to alcohol, there was little organized provision for
most European recruits serving in India during the early nineteenth
century. In part, this was a further consequence of the fiscal pressures
that so shaped the organization and deployment of the Indian Army.
The provision of ready access to sex and alcohol was thus socially
conditioned and financially practicable. Indeed, while the Government
of India sought to crack down on the supply of bazaar liquor to miti-
gate the not-infrequent cases of poisoning occasioned by illicit alco-
hol, official liquor also provided a useful source of revenue. Though
alternative forms of leisure became more widely available after the
1820s, the provision of reading rooms, coffee shops and regimental
savings banks was subjected to careful cost–benefit analysis, and often
depended on the personal assessments of those officers in charge of the
cantonment. The reticence – and parsimony – of commanding officers
was one of the reasons that the temperance movement found limited
success in India. While there was considerable concern about the inju-
rious behaviour of European soldiers, there were also countervailing
concerns that improvement would undermine the ‘brute strength’ of
the soldiers. Leisure and discipline were thus calculated to support the
army’s ultimate role as the guarantor of colonial power. Wald’s chap-
ter presents a picture of a complex and varied institution shaped by
social and cultural forces produced across imperial circuits as well as
by competing and sometimes contradictory financial and institutional
imperatives.
Douglas Peers’s chapter on W. H. Russell further illuminates the
wider imperial circuits across which histories of the Indian Army
may be traced. Having made his name reporting for The Times from
Crimea, Russell’s accounts of the counter-mutiny campaigns helped to
ensure that colonial war became a staple of the metropolitan media,
confirming his reputation as the first recognizably modern war cor-
respondent. Indeed, Russell was sent to India and given access to the
military high command, partly because the government in London was
keen to encourage more balanced coverage of the rebellion than was
emanating from the Anglo-Indian press. As Peers makes clear, Russell’s
10 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
Indian writings thus reflect the increasing importance of India, and the
military, in the political and cultural registers of the wider imperial
system. Comparing Russell’s published and unpublished writings on
1857, Peers shows how Russell fashioned his reportage according to
the preferences and the prejudices of his audience: glossing over the
worst instances of British brutality in his published works but also
criticizing aspects of imperial rule and colonial society. Though never
anti-imperialist, Russell was scathing in criticizing Anglo-Indian soci-
ety and his endorsement of the Government of India’s ‘clemency’ in
the aftermath of the rebellion was out of step with metropolitan tastes
and seems to have cost The Times readers. And yet, Russell’s writings
also recycled recurrent Orientalist tropes: his texts depict Indians as
lazy, childlike and easily inflamed; Islam and caste are frequent and
potent markers of Oriental difference. Whereas his Crimean reports
had repeatedly censured the military establishment, Russell offered
little explicit criticism of the high command in India. Peers’s read-
ing of Russell’s writings on 1857 helps to illuminate the multiple and
stratified relationships on which the imperial military depended: the
mutiny helped to establish and entrench networks connecting India
and the metropolis, but it also helped to highlight tensions within
these networks, between and among the government and the military
authorities, civilians and the military, as well as, of course, between
the colonizing and colonized populations. If Russell’s reporting of ‘the
mutiny’ helped to valorize empire and colonial war, it also provided
space for critique and challenge, even if these tended to be relatively
proscribed in nature. Though Peers situates Russell in a lineage of Tory
imperialists, he also shows how, in making colonial war a subject for
metropolitan consumption, and in framing metropolitan debates via
the medium of the press, Russell’s writings on 1857 highlight some of
the tensions and ambiguities which surrounded the Indian Army and
its place in the mid-Victorian empire.
While 1857 remains the most familiar of Britain’s colonial con-
flicts, recent years have seen renewed interest in the Indian Army’s
engagements on the North-West Frontier, particularly those of the late
nineteenth century. In South Asia, as in North America, contemporar-
ies invested the frontier with multiple cultural meanings, most obvi-
ously, perhaps, as the territorial meeting point between civilization
and savagery.20 As in accounts of 1857, writings on frontier conflict
were frequently over-determined by colonial hierarchies, though, as
the chapters by Gavin Rand and Sameetah Agha both demonstrate,
these oppositions may be reread to reveal considerable contingency
and complexity.
 Introduction 11
Gavin Rand’s chapter offers a cultural reading of colonial cam-
paigns on the North-West Frontier. Focusing on a series of expedi-
tions undertaken in Hazara and South Waziristan, Rand argues that
the forms and logics of military interventions reflected specific under-
standings of tribal culture. These understandings – which were eventu-
ally processed into a doctrine of ‘savage warfare’ – shaped the strategic
and tactical calculations of colonial commanders and officers. Thus,
punitive expeditions were conceived as mechanisms for ‘lifting the
purdah’ from recalcitrant tribesmen. The occupation of tribal terri-
tory was equated with a specific cultural transgression that signified
the power of the imperial state to discipline the tribal populations of
the frontier, and indeed the frontier itself. Frontier campaigns mobi-
lized a range of technological and logistical expertise: surveying, road
building and signalling operations served to constitute and crucially to
signify the range of colonial military power. Campaigns on the frontier
were thus performative and symbolic: colonial forces were dispersed
to instantiate the imperial presence, while villages were selected for
signal destruction to ‘prove’ the ability of colonial troops to penetrate
tribal territory. Specific forms of cultural knowledge were central to
the nature of conflict on the frontier, shaping the strategic and tactical
decision-making of colonial officers. However, if the emergence of a
doctrine of ‘savage warfare’ sought to ‘weaponize’ forms of colonial
cultural knowledge, it is also true that these doctrines reflected the
limits on imperial military power. Despite their numerical and materiel
superiority, colonial troops were usually incapable of forcing decisive
engagements with tribal enemies. Rand argues that the development of
specific logics for frontier warfare reflected the inability of the colonial
military to effect a conventional military settlement. The performa-
tive logic of colonial frontier campaigns suggests the importance of
colonial culture in shaping the Indian Army’s engagements on the
frontier but also the limits of colonial military power at the edge of
empire. A cultural reading of frontier conflict thus indicates not only
how colonial ideologies influenced the army in the field but also helps
to illustrate what these forms of knowledge obscured – the palpable
limits on colonial military power.
Sameetah Agha’s chapter also explores the intersections of culture,
knowledge and military power on the North-West Frontier. Focus-
ing on the opening of hostilities in the 1897 frontier uprising, Agha
provides a close reading of an incident at Maizar, in Waziristan, in
which a body of colonial troops was attacked by the tribesman,
apparently in contravention of the tribal code of Pukhtunwali. While
many colonial accounts explained the incident as a consequence of
12 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
Waziri ‘fanaticism’, Agha reconstructs a more complex and revealing
series of events, highlighting tensions between civilian and military
officials and illustrating the varied and differentiated responses of
tribal groups to colonial expansion. Agha’s chapter calls into question
high-political readings of the frontier encounter, showing significant
slippage between metropolitan strategic priorities and the realities
of an expanding colonial state. Following the proceedings of a mili-
tary tribunal set up to try tribal intermediaries (maliks) suspected of
organizing the attack at Maizar, Agha shows how the maliks were
able to exploit civil–military tensions in order to negotiate their own
positions relative to the colonial state and the tribal population of
Waziristan. Rereading the dynamics of civil–military relations Agha’s
chapter describes a form of ‘sub-imperialism’ at work on the frontier,
mapping not only the interests of the officers and officials on whose
accounts we rely but also those of the tribesmen and maliks who were
able to make themselves heard through the Maizar tribunal. Agha’s
chapter thus not only complicates prevailing assumptions about the
dynamics of civil–military relations on the frontier but also illustrates
how a careful reading of the colonial military archive can illuminate
questions of much wider historical import.21 In different ways, the
chapters from Rand and Agha illustrate how the military history of
the North-West Frontier can be read to reveal some of the wider his-
torical processes at stake during the expansion and consolidation of
the Victorian Raj.
Kaushik Roy’s analysis of the Indian Army’s performance in Malaya
in the Second World War reveals a very different empire, at a very
different historical moment.22 Roy provides a detailed analysis of the
organizational and operational-tactical failings which contributed to
the collapse of imperial military power in Malaya – the precursor to
the wider disaster in Singapore and Burma. While the Indian Army was
ineffective in Malaya – a fact Churchill used to underline his depiction
of the Indian Army as a ‘coolie force’ – so too were Commonwealth
forces and war-raised British troops.23 In explaining the disastrous per-
formance of the ‘Sepoys against the Rising Sun’,24 Roy highlights the
importance of organizational culture and ideological factors. Racism
and racial discrimination on the part of certain British commanding
officers and Japanese propaganda undermined the Indian soldiery’s
morale. Performance was further impaired by the rapid expansion of
the Indian Army during the early years of the war, particularly by
the resultant ‘milking’ in which experienced NCOs and sepoys were
replaced by raw recruits who lacked training with rifles, machine guns
and mortars. Similarly, few of the wartime commissioned officers were
 Introduction 13
able to provide the kinds of direction and coordination delivered by
more effective, more patrician old India hands. While contemporary
analyses of the disaster were often framed by intra-force mud-slinging,
the poor performance of Allied troops was a supra-national phenom-
enon. If the sepoys were easily defeated by the battle-hardened Japa-
nese, their performance reflected the stresses and limits on the Indian
Army’s command and operational culture during the first phases of
the war in Asia. Though there were further defeats to come, the army
also proved itself capable of regrouping and of delivering significant
victories over the Japanese. By highlighting failure in the organi-
zational culture of the Indian Army, this chapter attempts to link
‘traditional/operational’ military history with the broader cultural his-
tory of warfare.
Cat Wilson considers the performance of Indian troops in her analy-
sis of Winston Churchill’s accounts of the Indian Army’s contribu-
tion to the Second World War. Charting Churchill’s jaundiced views of
Indians in general, and of the sepoys and sowars of the Indian Army
in particular, Wilson shows how Churchill’s six-volume epic on The
Second World War marginalized and downplayed the range and sig-
nificance of the Indian Army’s contribution to the Allied war effort,
just as he had marginalized the contributions the Indian Army made at
crucial junctures during the First World War in his earlier World Cri-
sis.25 Though the Indian Army played a pivotal role in reconquering
Burma and in stalling Panzerarmee Afrika’s advance in North Africa
and later throwing it back in Tunisia and also in the Allied advance
along the spine of Italy and in Greece,26 Churchill never acknowledged
these important contributions in his writing, despite possessing ample
evidence to document their importance. For Churchill, whatever
strength the Indian Army displayed on the battlefield was due to the
presence of the British officers. In Churchill’s worldview, the Indian
Army was largely comprised of treacherous and cowardly Indians
liable to turn their guns against their masters if the opportunity pre-
sented itself. If Churchill’s prejudice is partly explained by his forma-
tive experiences in India, his selective representation of the war (and
the army’s role in the war) also reflected his re-orientation to the com-
ing, post-war world and his obsession with his own, and with Brit-
ain’s, wider strategic interests. Wilson concludes that Churchill never
wrote history; rather, he wrote autobiography clothed as history with
a view to preparing his return to Downing Street. A more balanced
assessment of the Indian Army’s battlefield performance might have
legitimized India’s independence, something which Churchill explicitly
sought to avoid. If it has taken historians of the Second World War a
14 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
long time to arrive at a more balanced understanding of the conflict,
and the contribution of the Indian Army to it, it is partly because
Churchill’s account drowned out more sympathetic analyses but also
because of the ambiguous place of the colonial Indian Army in the
history and historiography of postcolonial India. Wilson’s reading of
Churchill thus suggests curious parallels between colonial and nation-
alist historiographies of the Indian Army: while Churchill obscured
the contribution of the Indian Army to sustain his fantasies about the
longevity of the British Empire, the sepoys’ contribution to the war
effort has also been marginalized by the dictates of Indian nationalist
historiography, which accommodates the dubious martial pedigree of
Subhas Chandra Bose much more readily than it does the millions who
allied themselves with colonial power during the global conflicts of the
twentieth century.27
The tensions between imperialist and nationalist historiographies,
and the inability of both framings to adequately capture the diversity
of forces influencing the Indian Army, are examined in more detail in
Vipul Dutta’s analysis of the Indian Military Academy (IMA). Dutta
also shows the important, and in some ways, transformative effects
of the Second World War on Indianization and, ultimately, on the
military’s role during independence. The IMA occupied a key space
between policy and practice, and Dutta’s reading of the IMA illus-
trates how a granular approach can reveal nuances and complexities
in the histories of those individuals and institutions that served South
Asia’s colonial armed forces. This approach extends extant debates
on the Indianization of the officer corps by documenting the variety
of interests and calculations which shaped the history of the IMA.
Prevailing interpretations of Indianization have been dominated by
accounts which read imperial policy as gradualist or, more critically,
as wilfully obstructive.28 Where the gradualists see Indianization as
a ‘slow and steady’ process, more critical works have claimed that
racial and political hierarchies lead some senior officers to obstruct the
opening of the officer corps, with only the outbreak of war in 1939
forcing a more thorough-going process of Indianization.29 Dutta’s
chapter reveals a more complex history in which the IMA developed
in response to a host of contingent historical factors. While London
established the IMA in the hope of integrating India more effectively
in imperial defence, and perhaps also of excluding greater numbers of
Indian candidates seeking entry to metropolitan facilities, the Govern-
ment of India hoped the establishment of the IMA would acknowledge
Indian aspirations to ‘self-rule’. For the sons of Indian Army officers,
and those who aspired to commissions in the army, the IMA offered a
 Introduction 15
route, but not the only route, to ranking service. As Dutta shows, hier-
archies of status and preference were vital throughout, significantly
complicating the bipolar interpretations which underpin much of the
existing literature. The changing nature of conflict, and of training,
was also important here. Though nationalism and imperial reaction
were key throughout, the establishment of the IMA also reflected the
increasingly complex nature of combined operations and the greater
penetration of Indian society by the state occasioned by economic and
political shifts in the interwar period. The establishment and early
years of the Academy might thus be seen not simply as a response to
high-political struggles over nationalism but as a key site for the work-
ing out of more variegated interests. The Academy’s entrance require-
ments, curriculum and examination procedures reveal the centrality
of the military in the emergence of new connections between the state
and the population. The effects of the Second World War, and the
hasty process of decolonization it begot, produced a further series of
unintended effects, in part because of the IMA’s key role in negotiating
the complex matrix of interests which were at stake in the recruiting of
an officer corps for both colonial and postcolonial armies. Simplistic
accounts which stress either nationalism or imperialism obscure the
wider range of historical forces which helped to shape the IMA and
which a careful reading of the institution’s history can reveal.
The final chapter in the collection, from Florian Stadtler, focuses
on the impact of the Second World War on South Asians living in
Britain. While the Indian Army’s contribution to the First World War
is now well known and there is greater understanding of the vari-
ous roles played by the Indian Army during the Second World War,
much less has been written about the wartime work of the many South
Asians in the metropolis. Stadtler’s chapter shows not only the varied
contributions made by Indians but also popular efforts to mobilize
charitable support among the British population for Indian soldiers
and prisoners of war. While most nationalists in South Asia opposed
the Raj’s unilateral declaration of war, Indian nationalists in Britain
occupied a variety of positions vis-à-vis the war against Nazism. While
some actively participated in the European theatre – one Mr Pujji, for
example, served in RAF fighter squadrons during the war – others
undertook propaganda and auxiliary work. ‘Nationalist’ politicians,
including Krishna Menon, aligned the struggle against Nazism with
the struggle for democracy in India. Others established charity funds
and carried out propaganda works to mobilize the Indian diaspora
to the British war effort against the Nazis. If many of these contri-
butions are obscured in metropolitan narratives which depict Britain
16 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
‘standing alone’ against the Nazis, these histories sit equally uneasily
with the meta-narratives of postcolonial Indian nationalism. As with
the First World War – in which Gandhi devoted considerable energy
to supporting the British war effort – many Indian nationalists saw
opportunity and possibility in the challenges facing the imperial state.
Stadtler’s chapter suggests that the Indian diaspora calibrated their
actions in light not only of the politics of imperialism and nationalism
in South Asia but also in response to the unfolding events of the war.
That many of these calculations, and the contributions they preceded,
have been marginalized in British and Indian accounts of the period
suggests, once again, the central and yet ambiguous role that war and
military service has played in the interconnected histories of Britain
and colonial South Asia. As with the history of the IMA, colonial and
nationalist historiographies have failed to adequately account for the
complexity and diversity of these connections. If the memorialization
of war has encouraged a more inclusive account of these relationships,
too often these new histories simply temper flattening nationalist his-
toriographies with contemporary visions of multicultural nationhood.
Stadtler’s chapter, like the others in this collection, illustrates the many
and complex negotiations which connected warfare, culture and soci-
ety across, and beyond South Asia.

* * *
This volume is not intended to provide a comprehensive overview
of South Asia’s military history. Though the chapters are presented
chronologically, no attempt has been made to ensure consistent cover-
age. Our aim is to illustrate the variety of ways in which the military
history of colonial South Asia might be written, not to provide an
exhaustive account of that history.30 The chapters presented here reflect
some of the various ways in which historians of colonial South Asia
have conceptualized the relationship between culture and conflict. If
the previous chapters demonstrate a field which is far from exhausted,
they also reflect some of the difficulties and tensions which historians
have confronted in writing and thinking about the role of culture and
conflict in South Asian history. Culture is, of course, a challenging ana-
lytical construct, which can be conceived and utilized in various forms:
in the widest terms, as a way of thinking about how human beings
make sense of the world but also in much narrower terms in studies
of national, institutional and regimental cultures which are sometimes
said to produce specific forms of action and behaviour.31 Historical
analyses of the effects of ‘operational culture’ in specific actions may
share little in common with rhetorical analyses of the representations
of imperial conflict in metropolitan media. Tracing the culture of the
 Introduction 17
sepoys through their gestures, literature and legacy is a very different
project to examining the command culture of senior officers, officials
and politicians. In these ways, the military history of colonial South
Asia is also, and always was, a cultural history: culture was central to
the ways in which colonial conflicts were represented and understood,
while colonial conflict produced transformative cultural encounters
which registered (and continue to register) far beyond South Asia.
While the heterogeneity of the field is reflected in this collection, a
number of recurrent themes may be identified. The chapters which
follow demonstrate the multiple and sometimes conflicted systems of
knowledge which mediated the administration and operations of the
Indian Army. Tracing ideas across these pan-imperial networks helps
to show not only the interdependence of knowledge and power but
also the contradictions, limits and blind spots of these systems. Colo-
nial sources, which might have been dismissed as hopelessly partial,
may thus be productively reread to throw light on the contested and
negotiated history of colonial conflict. Similarly, complicating national
and nationalist historiographies is an important step towards better
understanding the history of imperial armies and conflicts.32 In this
sense, no singular ‘frontier thesis’ can explain engagements with the
frontier in colonial South Asia. Frontiers shifted and differed enor-
mously; so too did the means and the mechanisms by which fron-
tier regions were engaged and the significance with which they were
invested. The chapters thus show the complex and differentiated
worlds which interlocked around, and through, the colonial military.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the chapters demonstrate that
though the military history of colonial South Asia sits at the interface
of several historiographies – South Asian, global, military, imperial,
new military, new imperial – dialogues across these cognate fields are
both possible and productive.
If engaging with culture has been (and remains) challenging for
much military history, so too has engaging with military history been
challenging for social and cultural historians of empire – in South Asia
and beyond. The chapters collected here do not resolve these chal-
lenges, but we hope that they indicate the value, and the importance,
of identifying and addressing these issues. The centrality of conflict –
and of the military – to the history of colonial South Asia, and the rich-
ness and diversity of the archival sources which exist to document the
history of the imperial military, surely demand greater correspondence
and dialogue between military and cultural historiographies. While
skirmishes between practitioners with different methodological orien-
tations and expertise are to be welcomed, combined operations may
also deliver significant advances. We hope that these chapters provoke
18 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
some productive skirmishes, and suggest possible routes for combined
advances.

Notes
1 Until 1903, separate Presidency armies were maintained in Bengal, Bom-
bay and Madras. For clarity, unless indicated otherwise, we use the term
‘Indian Army’ to refer, collectively, to all of the military forces raised by
the East India Company and the Raj.
2 More than 1.2 million South Asians served the imperial war effort in
the First World War; by the Second World War, some 2.5 million did,
by which point the imperial military accounted for fully 70 per cent of
colonial expenditure. See also Kaushik Roy (ed.), The Indian Army in the
Two World Wars (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012); Roy, India and World War
II: War, Armed Forces, and Society (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2016); Yasmin Khan, The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Sec-
ond World War (London: Bodley Head, 2015); Srinath Raghavan, India’s
War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939–1945 (Gurgaon: Allen
Lane, 2016). We still lack an academic volume dealing holistically with
India’s experience during the First World War, but one can refer to DeWitt
C. Ellinwood and S.D. Pradhan (eds.), India and World War I (New Delhi:
Manohar, 1978); Budheswar Pati, India and the First World War (New
Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1996) and Amarinder Singh,
Honour and Fidelity: India’s Military Contribution to the Great War,
1914–1918 (2014, reprint, New Delhi: Lotus, 2015).
3 Santanu Das, ‘Indians at Home, Mesopotamia and France, 1914–1918:
Towards an Intimate History’, in Santanu Das (ed.), Race, Empire and
First World War Writing (2011, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2013), pp. 82–3.
4 Tarak Barkawi, ‘Subaltern Soldiers: Eurocentrism and the Nation-State in
the Combat Motivation Debates’, in Anthony King (ed.), Frontline: Com-
bat and Cohesion in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2015), pp. 24–5.
5 For the construction of Sikh/Singh identity of the Jat farmers of colonial
Punjab, see Richard G. Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985). For the evolution of
Gurkha identity among the various tribes of Nepal like Magars, Gurungs,
Rais and Limbus, the best account remains Lionel Caplan, Warrior Gen-
tleman: ‘Gurkhas’ in the Western Imagination (Providence; Oxford:
Berghahn Books, 1995). For the construction of martial race theory, see
Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in
British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2010).
6 Gavin Rand, ‘“Martial Races” and “Imperial Subjects”: Violence and
Governance in Colonial India, 1857–1914’, European Review of History:
Revue Europeenne D’histoire, vol. 13, no. 1 (2006), pp. 1–20.
7 For the continuity in the regimental structures of colonial and postcolo-
nial Indian and Pakistan armies, see John Gaylor, Sons of John Company:
The Indian and Pakistan Armies, 1903–1991 (1992, reprint, New Delhi:
 Introduction 19
Lancer, 1993). For a wider analysis of the army’s role in postcolonial
India, see Steven I. Wilkinson, Army and Nation: The Military and Indian
Democracy Since Independence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2015).
8 Kaushik Roy, ‘The Hybrid Military Establishment of the East India Com-
pany in South Asia: 1750–1849’, Journal of Global History, vol. 6 (2011),
pp. 195–218.
9 Alexander Bubb has argued that imperial service was key to formulations
of Irish identity. See his ‘The Life of the Irish Soldier in India: Repre-
sentations and Self-Representations, 1857–1922’, Modern Asian Studies,
vol. 46, no. 4 (2012), pp. 769–813.
10 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978, reprint, London: Penguin, 1995).
11 Clive Dewey, ‘The New Military History of South Asia’, International
Institute of Asian Affairs Newsletter, vol. 9 (Summer 1996) <http://iias.
asia/iiasn/iiasn9/south/dewey.html> [accessed 13 June 2016].
12 Jeremy Black, Rethinking Military History (Abingdon; New York: Rout-
ledge, 2004). For a critique of Black’s account – and a defence of recent
military histories – see Mark Moyar, ‘The Current State of Military His-
tory’, The Historical Journal, vol. 50, no. 1 (2007), pp. 225–40. Robert
M. Citino in ‘Military Histories Old and New: A Reintroduction’, Ameri-
can Historical Review, vol. 112, no. 4 (2007), pp. 1070–90, asserts that
the role of chance and chaos examined in military history writing can
teach other historians a good deal about challenging determinism.
13 Manchester University Press’s ‘Culture and Imperialism’ series contains
several works exploring metropolitan responses to imperial conflict, and
a useful account of Victorian soldiers in Africa, but no comparable vol-
ume on India. See J. M. MacKenzie (ed.), Popular Imperialism and the
Military: 1850–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992);
Edward Spiers, The Victorian Soldier in Africa (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2005).
14 Stephen Howe (ed.), The New Imperial Histories Reader (London; New
York: Routledge, 2009).
15 David E. Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940
(London: Macmillan, 1998).
16 Philip J. Stern, ‘From the Fringes of History: Tracing the Roots of the Eng-
lish East India Company-state’, in Sameetah Agha and Elizabeth Kolsky
(eds.), Fringes of Empire: Peoples, Places, and Spaces in Colonial India
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 19–44.
17 While the Cambridge school argue that the British intervened in India due
to pull factors and established a minimalist polity based on collaboration
with certain indigenous groups in the subcontinent, nationalist histories
claim that from the very first the British had the objective of dominating
India and created a maximalist suppressive polity.
18 Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the
Garrison State in Early Nineteenth Century India (London; New York:
I.B. Tauris, 1995).
19 Erica Wald, ‘Health, Discipline and Appropriate Behaviour: The Body of
the Soldier and Space of the Cantonment’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 46,
no. 4 (2012), pp. 815–56.
20 Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand
20 Alex Mckay, ‘“Tracing Lines upon the Unknown Areas of the Earth”:
Reflections on Frederick Jackson Turner and the Indo-Tibetan Frontier’,
in Agha and Kolsky (eds.), Fringes of Empire, p. 80.
21 In a recent article, Sameetah Agha conceptualizes sub-imperialism as the
local machinery of imperialism, arguing that it was the driving force in
shaping imperialism in the fringes of British Empire. Sameetah Agha,
‘Inventing a Frontier: Imperial Motives and Sub-Imperialism on Brit-
ish India’s Northwestern Frontier, 1889–98’, in Agha and Kolsky (eds.),
Fringes of Empire, p. 95. Before Agha, the concept of sub-imperialism for
expansion of the British Empire in east India was put forward by P. J. Mar-
shall. See his Bengal: The British Bridgehead, Eastern India 1740–1828,
The New Cambridge History of India, II: 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1987).
22 The most detailed chronological account of the collapse of the Com-
monwealth force in Malaya-Singapore remains Alan Warren’s Britain’s
Greatest Defeat: Singapore 1942 (2002, reprint, London: Hambledon
Continuum, 2006).
23 Alan Jeffreys in a recent essay notes the doctrinal failure of Lieutenant-
General A. E. Percival’s force to fight effectively in the jungle caused the
imperial collapse. Alan Jeffreys, ‘The Indian Army in the Malayan Cam-
paign, 1941–1942’, in Rob Johnson (ed.), The British Indian Army: Vir-
tue and Necessity (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2014), pp. 177–97.
24 For more on the Indian Army’s collapse in Malaya-Singapore, refer to
Kaushik Roy, Sepoys Against the Rising Sun: The Indian Army in Far East
and South-East Asia, 1941–45 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 66–152.
25 The Indian Army played an important role in stemming the German
advance in France at a crucial juncture in 1914 and did sterling service
at the Dardanelles, across Egypt-Syria-Palestine and in East Africa. For
the Indian Army’s contribution in France, see Gordon Corrigan, Sepoys
in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–15 (Sta-
plehurst: Spellmount, 1999) and the more recent Shrabani Basu, For King
and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front, 1914–18
(New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2015). The best academic book in this regard
is George Morton-Jack, The Indian Army on the Western Front: India’s
Expeditionary Force to France and Belgium in the First World War (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). For the disaster in Kut and the
Indian Army, see Nikolas Gardner, The Siege of Kut-al-Amara: At War in
Mesopotamia, 1915–1916 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014).
See also S. D. Pradhan, Indian Army in East Africa (New Delhi: National
Book Organization, 1991) and D. C. Verma, Indian Armed Forces in
Egypt and Palestine: 1914–1918 (New Delhi: Rajesh Publications, 2004).
26 We still lack specific volumes dedicated to the Indian Army’s performance
in Burma, East Africa, Western Desert and Italy during World War II but
some important works are as follows: Alan Jeffreys, ‘Indian Army Train-
ing for the Italian Campaign and Lessons Learnt’, and Christopher Mann,
‘Failures in Command and Control: The Experience of 4th Indian Division
in the Second Battle of Cassino, February 1944’, in Andrew L. Hargreaves,
Patrick J. Rose and Matthew C. Ford (eds.), Allied Fighting Effectiveness
in North Africa and Italy, 1942–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 103–19,
 Introduction 21
188–205. See also Alan Jeffreys and Patrick Rose (eds.), The Indian Army,
1939–47: Experiences and Development (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012). See also
Alan Jeffreys, Approach to Battle: Training the Indian Army during the
Second World War (Solihull: Helion, 2017).
27 See Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Sarat &
Subhas Chandra Bose (New Delhi: Viking, 1990); Romain Hayes, Bose in
Nazi Germany (Noida: Random House, 2011); Sugata Bose, His Majes-
ty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire
(New Delhi: Allen Lane, 2011).
28 Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development
of a Nation (1971, reprint, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).
For Philip Mason’s liberal paternalist framework in analyzing the genesis
and growth of the Indian Army, see his A Matter of Honour: An Account
of the Indian Army, Its Officers and Men (1974, reprint, Dehradun: EBD
Publishers, 1988).
29 Lieutenant-Colonel Gautam Sharma, Nationalisation of the Indian Army:
1885–1947 (New Delhi: Allied, 1996); Pradeep P. Barua, The Army
Officer Corps and Military Modernisation in Later Colonial India (Hull:
University of Hull Press, 1999); Michael Creese, Swords Trembling in
Their Scabbards: The Changing Status of Indian Officers in the Indian
Army, 1757–1947 (Solihull: Helion & Co. Ltd., 2015).
30 Other volumes already provide such synopses. See, for example, Pradeep
P. Barua, The State at War in South Asia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2005); Daniel P. Marston and Chandar S. Sundaram (eds.), A Mili-
tary History of India and South Asia: From the East India Company to the
Nuclear Era (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Kaushik Roy,
The Oxford Companion to Modern Warfare in India: From the Eight-
eenth Century to Present Times (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2009); Kaushik Roy, The Army in British India: From Colonial Warfare
to Total War 1857–1947 (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic,
2012).
31 For an overview, see Jeremy Black, War and the Cultural Turn (Cam-
bridge; Malden, MA: Polity, 2011). For a cultural analysis of western war-
fare see Martin van Creveld, The Culture of War (New York: Ballantine
Books, 2008). For historiography of the colonial Indian Army generally
see Kaushik Roy, ‘The Historiography of the Colonial Indian Army’, Stud-
ies in History, New Series, vol. 12, no. 2 (1996), pp. 255–73; ibid., ‘Mars
in Indian History’, Studies in History, New Series, vol. 16, no. 2 (2000),
pp. 261–75; Kaushik Roy, ‘Introduction: Armies, Warfare and Society in
Colonial India’, in Kaushik Roy (ed.), War and Society in Colonial India:
1807–1945 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 1–52.
32 Tarak Barkawi, ‘Decolonising War’, European Journal of International
Security, vol. 1, no. 2 (2016), pp. 199–214.
1 The Indian Army
A historiographical reflection
Ian F. W. Beckett

The historiography of the army in British India has followed, as might

be expected, the more general development of military history both
in Britain and elsewhere. The more traditional ‘drum and trumpet’
school of military history, with an emphasis upon decisive battles and
great commanders, held the field until the second half of the twentieth
century. There was also an undeniable air of imperial triumphalism of
the ‘Deeds That Won the Empire’ variety, itself an 1897 title by an Aus-
tralian Methodist minister, W. H. Fitchett, though many of the ‘drum
and trumpet’ authors were former soldiers. The traditional approach
was supplanted at least in academe by the ‘war and society’ school
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By the 1980s and 1990s this was
accepted as the ‘new’ military history, in which historians were rather
more interested in the impact of war upon states, societies, institutions
and individuals. It is hardly ‘new’ any longer, and military historians
have increasingly drawn upon more recent approaches such as those
of cultural historians, and also non-historical methodologies. In many
respects, the ‘agrarian’, ‘subaltern’ and ‘cultural’ studies familiar to
those who specialize in South Asian history preceded and anticipated
this development among Western military historians. What follows,
therefore, is an attempt by a non-specialist in South Asian history,
though one whose work has occasionally trespassed on the Indian
Army, to survey the broad development of the historiography. It is
acknowledged that it draws largely on British and North American
publications and theses, and that there will be additional South Asian
publications and theses that have not come to the author’s notice.
Beginning with the traditional approach, there is no shortage of
standard early histories such as John Williams’s splendidly titled An
Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Bengal Native
Infantry: From Its First Formation in 1757, to 1796 When the Pre-
sent Regulations Took Place, Together with a Detail of the Services
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 23
on which the Several Battalions Have Been Employed (1817). The
principal later histories are Arthur Broome, History of the Rise and
Progress of the Bengal Army (1850); William Wilson, History of the
Madras Army (1882); F. G. Cardew, Sketch of the Services of the Ben-
gal Native Army: To the Year 1895 (1903); and Sir Patrick Cadell, A
History of the Bombay Army (1938). Too often perhaps, early histo-
ries are dismissed when their authors trawled a great deal of primary
documentation, some of which may have been lost subsequently.
Perhaps deserving of particular mention as major descriptive works
in the great narrative tradition of William Napier’s account of the Pen-
insular War are John Kaye’s three-volume History of the Sepoy War
(1864–67), and Colonel George Malleson’s completion and expan-
sion of Kaye, the six-volume History of the Indian Mutiny (1878–80).
Kaye was Secretary of the India Office Political and Secret Department
until 1874. He had already written a three-volume history of the First
Afghan War, History of the War in Afghanistan (1857–58). Malleson,
who had held a number of posts in civilian administration in India,
retired from the army in 1877. He also penned biographies of both
Robert Clive and Warren Hastings. The work of Kaye and Malleson
has been described by P.J.O. Taylor in his valuable A Companion to
the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (1996), as ‘verbose all-embracing histories:
authoritative and dogmatic; entirely noble in sentiment, entirely Brit-
ish in attitude and sentiment’.1 Another prolific author, whose work is
not without some merit, however, was Sir George MacMunn, a former
quartermaster general in India. The Romance of the Indian Frontiers
(1931), for example, is at least indicative of a certain imperial mind-
set, not least in its pen portraits of frontier tribes, but The Armies of
India (1912) and The Martial Races of India (1933) – both illustrated
with the fine paintings of A. C. Lovat – have sociological interest. Of
course, there is also the plethora of traditional regimental histories
such as P. R. Innes, The History of the Bengal European Regiment
now the Madras Fusiliers, and How It Helped to Win India (1885), or
George Younghusband, The Story of the Guides (1908).
Turning to the modern historiography, there are a number of useful
general works, beginning with Kaushik Roy, The Oxford Companion
to Modern Warfare in India (2009). Other than Richard Holmes, Sahib
(2005), the British – as opposed to the Indian – Army in India has been
generally neglected, though it is touched upon in Tony Heathcote, The
Military in British India: The Development of British Land Forces in
South Asia, 1600–1947 (1995), and Heathcote’s The Indian Army:
The Garrison of British Imperial India, 1822–1922 (1974). Heathcote
also contributes to the valuable essays collected in Alan J Guy and
24 Ian F. W. Beckett
Peter Boyden (eds.), Soldiers of the Raj: The Indian Army, 1600–1947
(1997), based on a major exhibition at the National Army Museum.
Other contributors include Brian Robson, G. J. Bryant, Douglas Peers,
Randolf Cooper, Mark Jacobsen and S. L. Menezes. The volume also
gives full coverage to the uniforms and weaponry of the Indian Army.
Douglas Peers, Erica Wald and Raffi Gregorian, however, have pub-
lished essays on vice, health and discipline as they affected British
troops.2
In terms of other general histories, there are popular histories of
the Indian Army by Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account
of the Indian Army, Its Officers and Men (1974), and S. L. Menezes,
Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the
Twenty-First Century (1993). More recent academic interpretations
can be found in Partha Sarathi Gupta and Anirudh Deshpande (eds.),
The British Raj and its Indian Armed Forces, 1857–1939 (2002); Dan-
iel Marston and Chandra Sundaram (eds.), A Military History of India
and South East Asia: From the East India Company to the Nuclear
Era (2007); and Kaushik Roy (ed.), War and Society in Colonial
India, 1807–1945 (2006). Each has a range of useful essays. Gupta
and Deshpande, for example, have essays by Chandar Sundaram and
Gupta on considerations of Indianization between 1885 and 1891 and
between 1918 and 1939 respectively, and Vivien Ashima Kaul looks
at Bengal sepoys’ links with society between 1858 and 1895. Marston
and Sundaram have a more straightforward chronological coverage
and include essays by Sundaram on the Indian National Army and by
Marston on partition. Roy is thematic in approach with sections on
discipline, military culture and military effectiveness, and has an excel-
lent introduction on the impact of ‘agrarian’, ‘subaltern’ and ‘cultural’
studies on the specific historiography of the Indian Army. Roy is also
responsible for The Army in British India: From Colonial Warfare
to Total War, 1857–1947 (2013), which is primarily concerned with
operational and tactical developments. Stephen Peter Rosen, Societies
and Military Power: India and Its Armies (1996), puts the British expe-
rience in the much longer context of Indian history from antiquity to
the post-independence era, and the longer time frame is also presented
in Pradeep Barua, The State at War in South Asia (2005). Whereas
Rosen tends to follow the theme of inherent Western dominance then
current in the historiography, Barua looks beyond societal and cul-
tural interpretations to analyze the military effectiveness of successive
Indian states. In some respects, however, this still leads back to greater
European military prowess in later periods. The latest ‘long durée’
approach is Kaushik Roy, Military Manpower, Armies and Warfare
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 25
in South Asia (2013), which argues that class and culture have shaped
the composition of South Asian armies from antiquity to the present.
Rather less known perhaps are the details of the British presence
in the East Indies and on the China coast, for which there are three
studies by Alan Harfield, British and Indian Armies in the East Indies,
1685–1935 (1984); British and Indian Armies on the China Coast,
1785–1985 (1990); and Bencoolen: A History of the Honourable East
India Company’s Garrison on the West Coast of Sumatra, 1685–1825
(1995).
To stay for the moment with the wider context of Indian military
history, there was the assumption, as in Rosen, that what has been
come to be characterized as the early modern ‘military revolution’ was
essentially a phenomenon in the West, and explains Western domi-
nance as Europe began to expand. It has become increasingly clear
that, in expanding their empires, Europeans adapted to local condi-
tions, including existing patterns of warfare. Concentration on North
America had tended to mean that less attention has been paid to the
consolidation of British power in India that followed from victory in
the Seven Years War. Nonetheless, there has been an increasing body
of scholarly work on warfare in India that leads back to the debate on
the military revolution and the adaptation of European methods to the
subcontinent. There are two useful introductions. Douglas Peers (ed.),
Warfare and Empires: Contact and Conflict between European and
Non-European Military and Maritime Forces and Cultures (1997),
covers aspects of European military interaction with Africa, Asia
and the Americas from 1415 onwards. Three are essays on the East
India Company’s fortifications and army by Bruce Watson and Seema
Alavi, and coverage of the Maratha Wars by John Pemble and Ran-
dolf Cooper. The equally wide-ranging Wayne Lee (ed.), Empires and
Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in
the Early Modern World (2011), concentrates on evidence of Euro-
pean adaptation of indigenous military and diplomatic norms, with an
essay on the ‘military revolution’ in India by Douglas Peers. In India
in particular, it is apparent that the East India Company conformed
to traditional means of raising armed forces within the existing mili-
tary labour market, as suggested by Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and
Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market of Hindustan,
1450–1850 (1990).
There have also been a number of suggestive general surveys of the
merging of Western and Indian systems in chapters or articles by Peter
Marshall, Dirk Kolff, Bruce Lenman, Pradeep Barua, Jos Gommans,
Stewart Gordon, Kaushik Roy and G. J. Bryant.3 Bryant’s unpublished
26 Ian F. W. Beckett
1975 thesis remains the most detailed coverage of the early period
of the East India Company (EIC), albeit that much of it has now
appeared in separate essays or chapters.4 Also unpublished is John
Bourne’s 1978 thesis on the Company’s later civil and military patron-
age.5 Based on his earlier London thesis, there is also Amiya Barat, The
Bengal Native Infantry: Its Organisation and Discipline, 1796–1852
(1962), as well as the solid narrative focus of James Lawford, Britain’s
Army in India: From Its Origins to the Conquest of Bengal (1978).
The application of the concept of the fiscal-military state to India
is considered in C. A. Bayly (ed.), Origins of Nationality in South
Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern
India (1998). It is also worth noting that the concept of the garrison
state – the military-led mind-set – has been the subject of study in the
Indian context. Douglas Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colo-
nial Armies and the Garrison State in Early Nineteenth Century India
(1995), emphasises the relative precariousness of Company and Brit-
ish rule. Military concerns thus fuelled the First Burma War (1824–26)
and the seizure of Bharatpur (1825–26).6 The theme of a garrison state
has also been followed for the later period by Tan Tai Yong, The Gar-
rison State: The Military, Government and Society in Colonial Pun-
jab, 1849–1947 (2005), who argues that the administration, political
economy and society of the Punjab became highly militarized through
the army’s dependence on recruits from the area.
Turning now more to the chronology, the developing relationship
between the East India Company and native sepoys has been exam-
ined by Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and
Transition in Northern India, 1770–1830 (1995); and Channa Wick-
remesekera, The Best Black Troops in the World: British Perceptions
and the Making of the Sepoy, 1746–1805 (2002). There are additional
articles by Alavi, A.N. Gilbert and Bryant.7 The service of the first
British regiment to serve in India is touched upon in an Army Records
Society volume, Alan Guy (ed.), Colonel Samuel Bagshawe and the
Army of George II, 1731–62 (1990), Bagshawe being second in com-
mand of the 39th Foot in India from 1754 to 1756.
Bryant, Alan Guy and Peers have also examined British officers in
the Company’s service.8 Attempts to restructure the officer corps met
with opposition, as examined by Raymond Callahan, The East India
Company and Army Reform, 1783–98 (1972). Indeed, there was a
‘white mutiny’ in 1809. Peers has also looked at the Company’s offic-
ers in the first half of the nineteenth century.9 Indications of potential
disciplinary problems with native armies were already evident with the
mutiny at Vellore in 1806, caused by an order for sepoys to remove
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 27
caste marks and shave beards. The best source is James Hoover, Men
Without Hats: Dialogue, Discipline and Discontent in the Madras
Army, 1806–07 (2007), although there are also essays by R. E. Fryken-
berg and Devadas Moodley, as well as an unpublished thesis by A. D.
Cameron.10 As suggested by Peers, indiscipline was partially a reflec-
tion of different military cultures.11 Vellore may be the reason why
there have been particular studies of the Madras Army in the early
nineteenth century by Lorenzo Crowell and C. A. Montgomery. Both
are unpublished theses, though Crowell has two published articles.12
The standard history of the British conquest is Sir Penderel Moon,
The British Conquest and Dominion of India (1989), though there
have been two suggestive articles by Bryant, and there is a recent thesis
by Manu Sehgal.13 One early challenge for the Company in expanding
British influence was the state of Mysore, presided over by first Haidar
Ali and then his son, Tipu Sultan, resulting in three wars between 1767
and 1799, and culminating in the taking of the fortress of Srirangapat-
nam. Aspects of the conflict are investigated in Anne Buddle (ed.), The
Tiger and the Thistle: Tipu Sultan and the Scots in India, 1760–1800
(1999), accompanying an exhibition at the National Gallery of Scot-
land. The exhibition focussed on the artistic legacy of the conflict and,
in passing, it is worth mentioning a shorter catalogue of an exhibition
at the National Army Museum of Indian ‘Company’ images of the
British and EIC armies, Indian Armies, Indian Art: Soldiers, Collectors
and Artists, 1780–1880 (2010). The Mysore conflicts appear ripe for a
new study, though Roy has contributed an article on the use of rockets
by Mysore’s rulers.14
A second challenge was that posed by the Marathas, against whom
three wars were fought between 1778 and 1819. The background is
provided by Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Forma-
tion in Eighteenth Century India (1994), which can again be supple-
mented by an article by Roy on Maratha firepower.15 General surveys
are provided by K. G. Pitre, The Second Anglo-Maratha War, 1802–05
(1990), and Randolf G. S. Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns
and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian
Military Economy (2005). It was in the Second Maratha War (1803–
05), of course, that Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington, first
made his mark. Jac Weller’s Wellington in India (1972) was an early
study, but it can be supplemented by Anthony Bennell, The Making
of Arthur Wellesley (1997), and Bennell’s Army Records Society edi-
tion of The Maratha War Papers of Arthur Wellesley, 1803 (1998). In
addition, there is John Pemble’s article on resources, and Enid Fuhr’s
1994 thesis on the Second Maratha War.16 Cooper and Bennell also
28 Ian F. W. Beckett
contribute essays on Wellesley in India to Alan Guy (ed.), The Road
to Waterloo: The British Army and the Struggle against Revolutionary
and Napoleonic France, 1793–1815 (199), another National Army
Museum exhibition catalogue.
Inevitably, perhaps, the coming of the Mutiny (and rebellion) of
1857–58 looms large in studies of the Indian Army in the early nine-
teenth century. Of course, those general histories of the Indian Army
previously mentioned remain relevant. Continuing unrest was illus-
trated by the mutiny at Barrackpur in 1824, covered by Premansu
Kumar Bandyopadhyay, Tulsi Leaves and the Ganges Water (2003).17
Ostensibly, the mutiny was a refusal to serve in the First Burma War,
although the underlying context as in so many instances of mutiny
was one of more mundane ‘bread and butter’ issues. Service ‘overseas’,
however, was a continuing problem, and Bandyopadhyay has exam-
ined a number of issues relating to early sepoy service beyond India’s
frontier.18
Interpretation of the Mutiny has varied widely, not least among
Indian historians. Tapti Roy, The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bun-
delkhand, 1857 (1994), an example of the ‘subaltern studies’ approach,
casts the mutiny as a convergence of sepoy rebellion and wider revolt
by ‘lower’ social groups, suggesting that the ‘people’ forced indigenous
elites into action against the British. Erik Stokes (ed. by Christopher
Bayly), The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857 (1986), sees the
mutiny as a peasant agrarian uprising. Stokes also rejects the idea of a
widespread native conspiracy, but the idea of conspiracy is embraced
by J. A. B. Palmer, The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in 1857 (1966),
and Saul David, The Bengal Army and the Outbreak of the Indian
Mutiny (2009). John Pemble, The Raj, The Indian Mutiny and the
Kingdom of Oudh (1977) situated the outbreak of mutiny specifically
in the circumstances pertaining to Oudh. Contemporary historiogra-
phy and literary aspects have been examined by Christopher Hibbert,
War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma (2008), and
by G. Chakravarty, providing comparisons with the pre-Mutiny image
of the army as examined by Peers.19
The theory of Rudrangshu Mukherjee that the massacre of the
Europeans, including women and children, at Cawnpore replicated
British violence has been rejected by Barbara English.20 Alison Blunt
also looks at the issue of the treatment of British women.21 Mukher-
jee reiterates his argument in Spectre of Violence: The 1857 Kanpur
Massacres (1998) but then in Awadh in Revolt, 1857–58: A Study of
Popular Resistance (2001), modifies it to some extent by suggesting
that perceived British intent was the spur, but still sees the relationship
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 29
between British officers and sepoys as resting on racial violence.22 In a
different kind of revisionism, Mukherjee, Mangal Pandey: Brave Mar-
tyr or Accidental Hero? (2005), attempts to recover the mind-set of
the sepoy at the time of the Mutiny, downplaying later nationalist
interpretations, but this is questioned by Richard Forster, who argues
that Pandey’s actions were not isolated from proto-nationalism.23
Kim Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and
the Making of the Indian Uprising (2010), turns attention back to the
sepoys themselves, and to contingency in the context of their long-
standing grievances. Recent collections include Sabyasachi Bhattacha-
rya (ed)., Rethinking 1857 (2007); and Biswamoy Pati (ed.), The Great
Rebellion of 1857: Exploring Transgressions, Contexts and Diversi-
ties (2010), while Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, The Great Uprising in India,
1857–58: Untold Stories, Indian and British (2007), presents a num-
ber of specific case studies on lesser-known aspects. One lesser-known
aspect of the aftermath is the ‘white mutiny’ by European regiments of
the East India Company when they were incorporated into the British
Army in 1859. Peter Stanley, White Mutiny: British Military Culture
in India, 1825–75 (1998), examines the events, interpreting them as
part of a reshaping of social relationships in British society between
‘masters and men’.24
So far as the new Indian Army after 1858 is concerned, the issue of
the martial races has drawn attention as in David Omissi, The Sepoy
and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 (1994); Lionel Caplan,
Warrior Gentleman: Gurkhas in Western Imagination (1995); Heather
Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British
Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (2004), which encompasses Scottish
Highlanders as well as Sikhs and Gurkhas; and Kaushik Roy, Brown
Warriors of the Raj: Recruitment and the Mechanics of Command in
the Sepoy Army, 1859–1913 (2008).25 A fine and important study of
the army’s relationship with the post-1857 Punjab is Rajit Mazum-
der, The Indian Army and the Making of the Punjab (2003). Others
contributing to the debate on the martial races in chapters or articles
include Peers, Philip Constable, Mary Des Chene and Thomas Met-
calf.26 Unpublished theses also bear on recruitment.27
Particular mention should be made of the four-volume Mutiny on
the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857 series
(2013) deriving from an AHRC-funded project for the 150th anni-
versary at the University of Edinburgh in 2007–08 that involved con-
ferences and other events in both Edinburgh and London. Under the
overall editorship of Crispin Bates, the first volume deals with ‘Antici-
pations and Experiences in the Locality’, the second with ‘Britain
30 Ian F. W. Beckett
and the Indian Uprising’, the third with ‘Global Perspectives’ and the
fourth, edited by Bates and Gavin Rand, with ‘Military Aspects of the
Indian Uprising’. The latter includes contributions from Bates, Rand,
Roy, James Frey (looking back to Vellore), Sabyasachi Dasgupta, Gau-
tam Chakravarty and Gajendra Singh. The project website has useful
additional resources including primary sources.28
The shadow cast by the events of 1857–58 was long, and Roy has
investigated aspects of discipline in the later nineteenth century.29 Roy
has also discussed logistics and its contribution to both sepoy welfare
and military strength.30 A different perspective is that of Nile Green,
Islam and the Army of Colonial India: Sepoy Religion in the Service of
Empire (2009), examining the Hyderabad Contingent between 1850
and 1930.
Indianization of the officer corps was to become much more of an
issue in the twentieth century, but Pradeep Barua, Gentlemen of the
Raj: The Indian Officer Corps, 1817–1949 (2003), sets it in the con-
text of an idea first raised by Sir Thomas Munro at Madras in 1817.
Chandar Sundaram also examines the longer perspective in his 1996
thesis, and there is also Michael Creese’s 2007 thesis on Indian officers
in the Indian cavalry between 1858 and 1918.31 European volunteers
in India in the later period have been generally neglected beyond the
cataloguing of units in Chris Kempton, The Regiments and Corps of
the HIEC and Indian Army Volunteer Forces (2012). Roy, however,
contributes to a recent edited collection.32
In strategic terms, the security of India was increasingly seen in the
context of the perceived Russian threat in Central Asia. The doyen of
strategic analyses so far as India is concerned is Edward Ingram in The
Beginning of the Great Game in India, 1828–34 (1979), Commitment
to Empire: Prophecies of the Great Game in Asia, 1797–1800 (1981);
In Defence of British India: Great Britain in the Middle East, 1775–
1842 (1984); and Britain’s Persian Connection, 1798–1828: Prelude
to the Great Game in Asia (1992). One should also add G.J. Alder,
British India’s Northern Frontier, 1865–95 (1963); D.R. Gilliard, The
Struggle for Asia, 1828–1914 (1977); and Malcolm Yapp, Strategies of
British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan, 1798–1850 (1980), and
Robert Blyth, The Empire of the Raj: India, Eastern Africa and the
Middle East, 1858–1947 (2003), as significant contributions.33 Later
aspects of the strategic debate have been examined by Adrian Preston
and Rob Johnson, parts of whose thesis on Indian defence appears in
his The Afghan Way of War: Culture and Pragmatism – A Critical His-
tory (2011). Preston, however, invariably exaggerates his case as to the
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 31
influence of Indian Army perspectives on the actual strategic priorities
of British governments.34
There have been a number of other theses on aspects of the per-
ceived Russian threat to India that remain unpublished.35 Inevitably,
current engagement in Afghanistan has resulted in many more popular
accounts of the three Anglo-Afghan Wars of 1838–42, 1878–81 and
1919, to add to those that already existed. The best academic treat-
ment of the First Afghan War remains J. A. Norris, The First Afghan
War, 1838–42 (1967), while the Second Afghan War is well served in
Brian Robson, The Road to Kabul: The Second Afghan War, 1878–81
(1986).36 Robson also deals with the reforming Eden Commission,
whose work was carried out against the background of the war in
Afghanistan.37
Other campaigns such as the Kandyan Wars, Burma Wars and the
Persian War, all of which have popular accounts devoted to them,
would repay more academic study, although A.T.Q. Stewart, The
Pagoda War: Lord Dufferin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Ava,
1885–86 (1972), is an account for the general reader by an academic
historian.38 John Pemble, The Invasion of Nepal: John Company at
War (1971), is exemplary and has recently been reprinted. The Indian
expedition to Abyssinia has also drawn attention, the outstanding
academic account being Darrell Bates, The Abyssinian Difficulty: The
Emperor Theodorus and the Magdala Campaign, 1867–68 (1979).
The First and Second Sikh Wars and the Abyssinian expedition are
covered in essays in Brian Bond (ed.), Victorian Military Campaigns
(1967), and they are still useful although, again, the Sikh Wars require
a modern academic study.39
Ultimately, despite occasional setbacks such as Maiwand, for which
there is the popularly aimed but well-researched Leigh Maxwell, My
God Maiwand! Operations of the South Afghanistan Field Force,
1878–80 (1979), the British enjoyed the advantages of superior fire-
power and technology in their colonial campaigns. Tim Moreman, The
Army in India and the development of Frontier Warfare, 1849–1947
(1998), provides a particularly useful guide to the learning process
on the North West Frontier.40 Again, inspired by more recent events,
techniques of political pacification have also been assessed, as in Hugh
Beattie, Imperial Frontier: Tribe and State in Waziristan (2002); Mar-
tin Ewans, Securing the Indian Frontier in Central Asia: Confrontation
and Negotiation, 1865–95 (2010); Christopher Wyatt, Afghanistan
and the Defence of Empire: Diplomacy and Strategy during the Great
Game (2011); and Christian Tripodi, Edge of Empire: The British
32 Ian F. W. Beckett
Political Officer and Tribal Administration on the North West Fron-
tier, 1877–1947 (2011). There is an earlier pioneering study of the
relationship of army and political officers by W. Murray Hogben.41
While Beattie’s focus is Waziristan, R. O. Christensen’s 1987 thesis on
relations with the Afridi remains unpublished, although Christensen
has published an essay, and a suggestive book review. There is also a
pioneering study of the North-East Frontier by Timothy Holt.42
It goes without saying that these academic works are far superior
to the usual crop of popular histories of warfare on the frontier. In
many respects, however, H. L. Nevill, Campaigns on the North West
Frontier, is still just as useful despite having been published in 1912.
Mention should also be made of the Official History, Frontier and
Overseas Expeditions from India 7 vols. (1907–13). There was also
a separate six-volume official history of the Second Afghan War com-
piled by Sir Charles MacGregor in 1885. It was suppressed by Freder-
ick Roberts, however, with a two-volume abridged version substituted
in 1897 only for this also to be suppressed with a bowdlerized single
volume finally appearing in 1908. Fortunately, copies survive in the
British Library.43
Intelligence contributed significantly to security in India. Inevi-
tably perhaps, the ‘Great Game’ has attracted considerable inter-
est from popular authors. Intelligence, however, is also the subject
of C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence-gathering and
Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (1996); Richard Pop-
plewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the
Defence of the Indian Empire, 1904–24 (1995); and, most recently,
James Hevia, The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge
and Empire-Building in Asia (2012).
Studies of many of those who made their name in India are fre-
quently outdated, inadequate or non-existent. Gerald Lake, Charles
Napier, Hugh Gough, John Nicholson, Henry Havelock, Colin Camp-
bell, Donald Stewart and William Lockhart all spring to mind as sub-
jects ripe for revision. Hugh Rose, however, is well served in the Army
Records Society edition of his papers by Brian Robson, Sir Hugh Rose
and the Central India Campaign, 1858 (2000). David James, Lord
Roberts (1954), also badly needs updating but centring on Roberts
is Rodney Atwood, The March to Kandahar: Roberts in Afghanistan
(2008). Atwood is now preparing a new biography.44 Heather Streets,
Ian Beckett and Rob Johnson have also examined aspects of Roberts’s
Indian career, highlighting some less admirable attributes.45 There is
also an edition of Roberts’s papers edited by Brian Robson, Roberts in
India: The Military Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts, 1876–93
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 33
(1993). MacGregor’s highly revealing diary of the Second Afghan War
has been published as William Trousdale (ed.) War in Afghanistan,
1879–80: The Personal; Diary of Major General Sir Charles Metcalfe
MacGregor (1985). The contribution of that other great imperial pro-
consul to the development of the Indian Army, Kitchener, has been
examined in a chapter by Tim Moreman focussing on the development
of the General Staff in India, while the attempted pre-war reform of
the army is the subject of a thesis by Benjamin Gillon.46
Turning to the twentieth century, the wider Indian Army context
is covered in Anirudh Deshpande, British Military Policy in India,
1900–45: Colonial Constraints and Declining Power (2005). For the
great challenge of the Great War, there is DeWitt Ellinwood and S. D.
Pradhan (eds.), India and World War I (1978), but it needs updating.47
The problematic performance of the Indian Army on the Western
Front is the subject of a popular account, Gordon Corrigan, Sepoys
in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–15
(1999), which is supplanted by the academic study of George Morton-
Jack, The Indian Army on the Western Front (2013). Some pioneering
articles on the Indian Corps were contributed, of course, by Jeffrey
Greenhut, whose 1978 thesis was not otherwise published.48 Also
unpublished is I. D. Leask’s 1989 thesis on the wartime expansion of
the army.49 Mark Harrison has touched on medical issues.50
A central tenet of subaltern studies is the emphasis upon history
from below, but the voice of the sepoy is difficult to recover. There is
the well-known but disputed autobiography of Sita Ram, From Sepoy
to Subedar, first published in 1873. The instructive diary of a Rajput
is presented in De Witt Ellinwood, Between Two Worlds: A Rajput
Officer in the Indian Army, 1905–21, Based on the Diary of Amar
Singh of Jaipur (2005). For the Great War, however, there are the sur-
viving censor’s reports, albeit that this is the voice of the sepoy as first
recorded by regimental scribes and then translated for the benefit of
the censors. Based on this material, David Omissi (ed.), Indian Voices
of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914–18 (1999), is an important
source for the experience of ordinary Indian soldiers. Susan VanKoski
has also used those from Punjabi soldiers, the Punjab experience also
being examined by Tan Tai-Yong.51 An American thesis by Andrew
Tait Jarboe, which has only just been completed, extends the study of
the Indian soldier abroad from the Western Front to hospitals in Brit-
ain and France and to POW camps in Germany.52 R.A. McLain also
explores concepts of masculinity in another American thesis.53
Nikolas Gardner and Roy cover equally difficult experiences for
Indian troops in Mesopotamia.54 The context is explored in P.K. Davis,
34 Ian F. W. Beckett
Ends and Means: The British Mesopotamia Campaign and Commis-
sion (1994), while a number of the essays in Kaushik Roy (ed.), The
Indian Army in the Two World Wars (2011), are especially relevant
to Mesopotamia, as well as the Indian contribution to the campaigns
in Egypt and Palestine. Light is also shone on Mesopotamia in an
Army Records Society volume, Andrew Syk (ed.), The Military Papers
of Lieutenant General Frederick Stanley Maude, 1914–17 (2012).
Charles Townshend, When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of
Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914–21 (2010), carries the
story into the Indian Army’s role in the post-war pacification of Iraq.55
The Singapore Mutiny of 1915 involving the 5th (Native) Light
Infantry has been the subject of perhaps excessive interest with more
recent studies tending to give it an external and political context it
lacked, since familiar internal issues were at its root.56 Nonetheless,
the Indian Army did not break in either world war, as suggested by
Raymond Callahan.57 By contrast, one further aspect of the contribu-
tion of Indian manpower to the Great War that has been neglected is
the question of the Indian labour contingents on the Western Front
and elsewhere. These would pay far more attention than they have
received thus far, work on the Chinese Labour Corps being far more
prominent.
The problem of post-1918 ‘Indianization’ is touched upon in
another Army Records Society volume, Mark Jacobsen (ed.), Rawlin-
son in India (2002), Rawlinson being Commander-in-Chief in India
from 1920 to 1925, and the subject of Jacobsen’s earlier thesis.58
More significant in the historiography of the interwar period, how-
ever, is internal security. This inevitably raises the question of Amrit-
sar in 1919, on which radically different views are offered by Nigel
Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (2006), and
Nick Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre: The Untold Story of One Fateful
Day (2011), Lloyd also elaborating on the theme in articles.59 Lloyd
and Rob Johnson also contribute essays on interwar policing to Roy
(ed.), The Indian Army in Two World Wars. Imperial policing in India
generally has also come under the spotlight from Srinath Raghaven,
Gyanesh Kudaisya and especially from Simeon Shoul, who died tragi-
cally young and before he could convert his 2006 thesis into a mono-
graph, leaving just one journal article.60 The longer-term context is
examined by D Gorge Boyce.61 Much of this particular area of study
plays into a developing interest generally in the development of Brit-
ish counter-insurgency and a contentious debate on whether or not
post-1945 British campaigns adhered or not to an apparent doctrine
of ‘minimum force’.
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 35
There is another unpublished thesis by N. Narain from 1993 on
the role of the colonial army in interwar India and, similarly, Susan
VanKoski’s 1996 American thesis on provision for Indian Army vet-
erans.62 For continuing warfare on the frontier there are the later
chapters of Moreman’s monograph mentioned earlier as well as Alan
Warren, Waziristan: The Faqir of Ipi and the Indian Army: The North
West Frontier Revolt (2000); and Brian Robson, Crisis on the Fron-
tier: The Third Afghan War and the Campaign in Waziristan, 1919–20
(2004).63 Edward Spiers covers the debates on the use of both explo-
sive bullets and gas on the frontier.64 David Omissi in Air Power and
Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919–39 (1990) examines
aerial policing in India as well as elsewhere in the empire.
On interwar strategic concerns, there are a number of unpublished
theses as well as articles.65 Some of those works on political pacifica-
tion mentioned earlier such as Beattie and Tripodi remain relevant
since their date range extends into the twentieth century, while Robert
Taylor has looked at the organization of local forces in Burma.66
For the Second World War in the Far East, there are two recent
studies looking at how the ‘forgotten’ Fourteenth Army in Burma was
transformed into one confident of operating in the jungle, namely
Daniel Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: the Indian Army in the
Burma Campaign (2003), and Tim Moreman, The Jungle, the Jap-
anese and the British Commonwealth Armies at War, 1941–1945:
Fighting Methods, Doctrine and Training for Jungle Warfare (2005).
Marston’s focus is on the Indian, rather than the British, soldier. More-
man, Marston, Raymond Callahan and Alan Jeffreys all contribute to
Roy (ed.) The Indian Army in Two World Wars. The Second World
War experience of the Indian Army including the Middle East is also
well covered in Alan Jeffreys and Patrick Rose (eds.), The Indian
Army, 1939–47: Experience and Development (2012), the contribu-
tors including Moreman, Marston, Callahan and David Omissi.67 The
Indian involvement in the fall of Singapore in February 1942 was a
particularly low point, as discussed by Alan Warren.68
The fate of Singapore contributed to the creation of the Indian
National Army, which is among the subjects dealt with in Christo-
pher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British
Asia, 1941–45 (2006). Bayly and Harper have continued the story
of the reassertion of colonial rule in Forgotten Wars: Freedom and
Revolution in Southeast Asia (2007), a period also partly covered by
Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East
Asia Command, 1945–46 (1987). An older work on the INA is Peter
Fay, The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence,
36 Ian F. W. Beckett
1942–45 (1993). Indian perspectives on the INA are found in K.K.
Ghosh, The Indian National Army: The Second Front of the Indian
Freedom Movement (1969), and another article by Chandar Sunda-
ram.69 R.B. Osborn deals with the army and partition in an unpub-
lished 1994 American thesis.70 There are also useful essays on partition
in Jeffreys and Rose (eds.), The Indian Army, 1939–47.71
This chapter has concentrated upon chronology at the expense of
theme, although it is to be hoped that it is clear that there is a rich and
varied historiography of growing sophistication for the army of British
India. As the papers presented at the Greenwich symposium in 2013
also suggest, yet further work is underway to illuminate even more
aspects of the colonial military experience in India. Indeed, recently
published volumes include Kaushik Roy, War, Culture and Society in
Early Modern Asia, 1740–1849; Peter Lorge and Kaushik Roy (eds.),
Chinese and Indian Warfare: From the Classical Age to 1870; and
Kaushik Roy, Cavalry, Guns and Military Transition in Early Modern
Asia: A Comparative Study of China, India, Persia and the West, as
well as Gajendra Singh, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and Two
World Wars: Between Self and Sepoy. In abundant forms, therefore,
the output of academic work on the Indian Army fully reflects the evo-
lution of military historiography from those early traditional accounts
of daring do in Bengal.

Notes
1 P. J. O. Taylor (ed.), A Companion to the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857 (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 392.
2 Douglas Peers, ‘Imperial Vice: Sex, Drink and the Health of British Troops
in North Indian Cantonments, 1800–58’, in David Killingray and David
Omissi (eds.), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial
Powers, c. 1700–1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999),
pp. 25–52; Erica Wald, ‘Health Discipline and Appropriate Behaviour:
The Body of the Soldier and Space of the Cantonment’, Modern Asian
Studies, vol. 46 (2012), pp. 815–56; Raffi Gregorian, ‘Unfit for Service:
British Law and Looting in India in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, South
Asia, vol. 13 (1990), pp. 63–84. For disease generally, see Kaushik Roy,
‘Managing the Environment: Disease, Sanitation and the Army in British
India, 1859–1915’, in Ranjan Chakrabarti (ed.), Situating Environment
History (Delhi: Manohar, 2007), pp. 187–219.
3 Peter J. Marshall, ‘Western Arms in Maritime Asia in the Early Phases of
Expansion’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 14 (1980), pp. 13–28; Dirk Kolff,
‘The End of an Ancien Regime: Colonial War in India, 1798–1818’, in J.
A. de Moor and H. L. Wesseling (eds.), Imperialism and War: Essays on
Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa (Leiden: Brill, 1989), pp. 22–49; Bruce
Lenman, ‘The Transition to European Military Ascendancy in India,
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 37
1600–1800’, in John Lynn (ed.), The Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas and
Institutions of Warfare, 1445–1871 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1990), pp. 100–30; Pradeep Barua, ‘Military Developments in India,
1750–1850’, Journal of Military History, vol. 58 (1994), pp. 559–616;
Jos Gommans, ‘Indian Warfare and Afghan Innovation During the Eight-
eenth Century’, Studies in History, vol. 11 (1995), pp. 261–80; Stewart
Gordon, ‘The Limited Adoption of European-style Military Forces by
Eighteenth Century Rulers in India’, Indian Economic and Social History
Review, vol. 35 (1998), pp. 229–45; G. J. Bryant, ‘Asymmetric Warfare:
The British Experience in Eighteenth Century India’, Journal of Military
History, vol. 68 (2004), pp. 431–69; Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Synthesis in
South Asia: Armies, Warfare and Indian Society, 1740–1849’, Journal of
Military History, vol. 69 (2005), pp. 651–90.
4 G. J. Bryant, ‘The East India Company and Its Army, 1600–1778’, PhD,
University of London, 1975.
5 John Bourne, ‘The Civil and Military Patronage of the East India Com-
pany, 1784–1858’, PhD, University of Leicester, 1978.
6 See also Douglas Peers, ‘Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State:
Modernity, Hybridity and the Political Economy of Colonial India,
c.1750–1860’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East, vol. 27 (2007), pp. 245–58.
7 Seema Alavi, ‘The Company Army and Rural Society: The Invalid Thana,
1780–1830’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 27 (1993), pp. 147–78; A. N.
Gilbert, ‘Recruitment and Reform in the East India Company Army,
1760–1800’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 15 (1975), pp. 89–111; James
Hoover, ‘The Recruitment of the Bengal Army: Beyond the Myth of the
Zemindar’s Son’, Indo-British Review, vol. 21 (1993), pp. 144–56; G. J.
Bryant, ‘The Cavalry Problem in the Early British Indian Army, 1750–85’,
War in History, vol. 2 (1995), pp. 1–21; ibid., ‘Indigenous Mercenaries in
the Service of European Imperialists: The Case of the Sepoys in the Early
British Indian Army, 1750–1800’, War in History, vol. 7 (2000), pp. 2–28.
8 G. J. Bryant, ‘Officers of the East India Company’s Army in the Days
of Clive and Hastings’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,
vol. 6 (1978), pp. 203–27; Alan Guy, ‘“People Who Will Stick at Noth-
ing to Make Money”: Officers’ Income, Expenditure and Expectations in
the Service of John Company, 1750–1840’, in Alan J. Guy and Peter B.
Boyden (eds.), Soldiers of the Raj: The Indian Army, 1600–1947 (Lon-
don: National Army Museum, 1997), pp. 39–56; Douglas Peers, ‘Colonial
Knowledge and the Military in India, 1780–1860’, Journal of Imperial
and Commonwealth History, vol. 33 (2005), pp. 157–80.
9 Douglas Peers, ‘The Habitual Nobility of Being: British Officers and the
Social Construction of the Bengal Army in the Early Nineteenth Century’,
Modern Asian Studies, vol. 25 (1991), pp. 545–69. See also Peers, ‘Between
Mars and Mammon: The East India Company and Efforts to Reform
Its Army, 1796–1832’, Historical Journal, vol. 25 (1991), pp. 385–401;
idem, ‘Soldiers, Scholars and the Scottish Enlightenment: Militarism in
Early Nineteenth Century India’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, vol. 16 (1994), pp. 441–60.
10 R. E. Frykenberg, ‘New Light on the Vellore Mutiny’, in Kenneth Ball-
hatchet and John Harrison (eds.), East India Company Studies: Papers
38 Ian F. W. Beckett
Presented to Professor Sir Cyril Philips (Hong Kong: Asian Research
Series, 1986), pp. 212–15; idem., ‘Conflicting Norms and Political Inte-
gration in South India: The Case of the Vellore Mutiny’, Indo-British
Review, vol. 13 (1987), pp. 51–63; Devadas Moodley, ‘Vellore, 1806: The
Meanings of Mutiny’, in Jane Hathaway (ed.), Rebellion, Repression and
Reinvention: Mutiny in Comparative Perspective (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2001), pp. 87–102; A.D. Cameron, ‘The Vellore Mutiny’, PhD, University
of Edinburgh, 1984.
11 Douglas Peers, ‘Army Discipline, Military Cultures and State-Formation
in Colonial India, c.1780–1860’, in Huw Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke and
John Reid (eds.), Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean
Worlds, c.1550–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),
pp. 282–307; idem, ‘Sepoys, Soldiers and the Lash: Race, Caste and Army
Discipline in India, 1820–50’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, vol. 23 (1995), pp. 211–47.
12 Lorenzo Crowell, ‘The Military in a Colonial Context: The Madras Army
circa 1832’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 24 (1990), pp. 249–72; idem,
‘Logistics in the Madras Army, c.1830’, War & Society, vol. 10 (1992),
pp. 1–33; idem, ‘The Madras Army in the Northern Circars, 1832–33:
Pacification and Professionalism’, PhD, Duke University, 1982; C. A.
Montgomery, ‘The Sepoy Army and Colonial Madras, c.1806–57’, DPhil,
University of Oxford, 2002.
13 G. J. Bryant, ‘Pacification in the Early British Raj, 1755–86’, Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 14 (1985), pp. 3–19; idem,
‘The Military Imperative in Early British Expansion in India, 1750–85’,
Indo-British Review, vol. 21 (1993), pp. 18–35; Manu Sehgal, ‘British
Expansion and the East India Company, 1770–1815’, PhD, University of
Exeter, 2011.
14 Kaushik Roy, ‘Rockets Under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan’, Indian Journal
of the History of Science, vol. 40 (2005), pp. 635–55.
15 Kaushik Roy, ‘Firepower-centric Warfare in India and the Military Mod-
ernisation of the Marathas, 1740–1818’, Indian Journal of the History of
Science, vol. 40 (2005), pp. 597–634.
16 John Pemble, ‘Resources and Techniques in the Second Maratha War’,
Historical Journal, vol. 19 (1976), pp. 375–404; Enid M. Fuhr, ‘Strategy
and Diplomacy in British India Under Marquess Wellesley: The Second
Maratha War, 1803–06’, PhD, Simon Fraser University, 1994. See also W.
A. C. Halliwell, ‘British Relations with the Marathas under the Wellesley
Regime’, PhD, University of Southampton, 2000.
17 See also Premansu Kumar Bandyopadhyay, ‘The Water of the Ganges
and the Tulsi Leaves: Symbol of Sepoy Solidarity Against the Expedi-
tion to Burma, 1824–26: Anatomy of the Sepoy Mutiny at Barrackpore,
1824’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 55 (1995),
pp. 889–900.
18 Premansu Kumar Bandyopadhyay, ‘The Role of Indian Sepoys in the Brit-
ish Imperial Wars Outside India, 1762–1801: Apportionment of the Cost
Between the East India Company and the Imperial Government’, Proceed-
ings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 51 (1990), pp. 706–13; idem,
‘Expansion of the Trade in, and Expulsion of the French from Egypt and
the Red Sea Areas: The English East India Company’s Sepoy Expedition
from India to Egypt, 1801–02’, Proceedings of the Indian History Con-
gress, vol. 57 (1996), pp. 831–45.
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 39
19 G. Chakravarty, ‘Imagining Resistance: British Historiography and Popu-
lar Fiction on the Indian Rebellion, 1857–59’, PhD, University of Cam-
bridge, 1999; Douglas Peers, ‘Those Noble Exemplars of the True Military
Tradition: Constructions of the Indian Army in the Mid-Victorian Press’,
Modern Asian Studies, vol. 31 (1997), pp. 109–42.
20 Rudrangshu Mukherjee, ‘ “Satan Let Loose upon the Earth”: The Kanpur
Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857’, Past & Present, no. 128 (1990),
pp. 92–116; Barbara English, ‘The Kanpur Massacres in India and the
Revolt of 1857’, Past & Present, no. 142 (1994), pp. 169–78.
21 Alison Blunt, ‘Embodying War: British Women and Domestic Defilement
in the Indian Mutiny’, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 26 (2000),
pp. 403–28.
22 See also Rudrangshu Mukherjee, ‘The Sepoy Mutinies Revisited’, in
Mushirul Hasan and Narayani Gupta (eds.), India’s Colonial Encounter:
Essays in Memory of Eric Stokes (Delhi: Manohar, 1993), pp. 193–204,
but reproduced in Kaushik Roy (ed.), War and Society in Colonial India:
1807–1945 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 114–25.
23 Richard Forster, ‘Mangal Pandey: Drug-crazed Fanatic or Canny Revolu-
tionary?’, Columbia Undergraduate Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 1
(2009), pp. 3–23.
24 Peter Stanley, White Mutiny: British Military Culture in India, 1825–75
(London: Hurst & Co., 1998); idem, ‘Military Culture and Military Pro-
test: The Bengal Europeans and the White Mutiny of 1859’, in Hatha-
way (ed.), Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention, pp. 103–18; idem, ‘“Dear
Comrades”: Barrack Room Culture and the White Mutiny of 1859–60’,
Indo-British Review, vol. 21 (1996), pp. 165–75.
25 See also David Omissi, ‘Martial Races: Ethnicity and Security in Colonial
India, 1858–1939’, War & Society, vol. 9 (1991), pp. 1–27; Lionel Caplan,
‘Bravest of the Brave: Representations of the Gurkha in British Military
Writings’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 25 (1991), pp. 571–98; Kaushik
Roy, ‘Beyond the Martial Race Theory: A Historiographical Assessment
of Recruitment in the British-Indian Army’, Calcutta Historical Review,
vols. 21–22 (1999–2000), pp. 139–54; idem, ‘The Construction of Regi-
ments in the Indian Army, 1859–1913’, War in History, vol. 8 (2001),
pp. 127–48; idem, ‘Recruiting for the Leviathan: Regimental Recruit-
ment in the British Indian Army, 1859–1913’, Calcutta Historical Review,
vols. 23–24 (2001–04), pp. 59–81.
26 Douglas Peers, ‘Those Noble Exemplars of the True Military Tradition:
Constructions of the Indian Army in the Mid-Victorian Press’, Modern
Asian Studies, vol. 31 (1997), pp. 132–40; Mary Des Chene, ‘Military
Ethnology in British India’, South Asia Research, vol. 19 (1999), pp. 122–
35; Philip Constable, ‘The Marginalisation of a Dalit Martial Race in Late
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Western India’, Journal of Asian
Studies, vol. 60 (2001), pp. 439–78; Thomas Metcalf, ‘Sikh Recruitment
for Colonial Military and Police Forces, 1874–1914’, in Thomas Metcalf
(ed.), Forging the Raj: Essays on British India in the Heyday of Empire
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 250–81.
27 A. P. Coleman, ‘The Origins of the Gurkhas in British Service’, MPhil,
University of London, 1995; R. K. Mazumder, ‘The Making of the Punjab:
Colonial Power, the Indian Army and Recruited Peasants’, PhD, Univer-
sity of London, 2001; G. McCann, ‘Sikhs, the Indian Army and the Raj,
c.1890–1920’, MPhil, University of Cambridge, 2002.
40 Ian F. W. Beckett
28 ‘Mutiny at the Margins: The Indian Uprising of 1857’, www.csas.ed.ac.
uk/mutiny (accessed 10 June 2015).
29 Kaushik Roy, ‘Coercion Through Leniency: British Manipulation of the
Courts Martial System in the Post-Mutiny Indian Army, 1859–1913’,
Journal of Military History, vol. 65 (2001), pp. 937–64’; idem, ‘Spare
the Rod, Spoil the Soldiers? Crime and Punishment in the Army of India,
1860–1913’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, vol. 84
(2006), pp. 9–23.
30 Kaushik Roy, ‘Feeding the Leviathan: Supplying the British-Indian Army,
1859–1913’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, vol. 80
(2002), pp. 144–61; idem, ‘Equipping Leviathan: Ordnance Factories of
British India, 1859–1913’, War in History, vol. 10 (2003), pp. 398–423.
31 Chandar Sundaram, ‘A Grudging Concession: The Indianisation of the
Indian Army’s Officer Corps, 1817–1917’, PhD, McGill University,
1996; Michael Creese, ‘Swords Trembling in Their Scabbards: A Study
of Indian Officers in the Indian Cavalry, 1858–1918’, PhD, University
of Leicester, 2007. See also Chandar Sundaram, ‘“Martial” Indian Aris-
tocrats and the Military System of the Raj: The Imperial Cadet Corps,
1900–14’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 25
(1997), pp. 415–39; idem, ‘Preventing “Idleness”: The Maharajah of
Cooch Behar’s Proposal for Officer Commissions in the British Army for
the Sons of Indian Princes and Gentlemen, 1897–98’, South Asia, vol. 18
(1995), pp. 115–30.
32 Kaushik Roy, ‘India’, in Ian F. W. Beckett (ed.), Citizen Soldiers and
the British Empire, 1837–1902 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012),
pp. 101–20.
33 See also G. J. Alder, ‘Britain and the Defence of India: The Origins of the
Problem, 1798–1815’, Journal of Asian History, vol. 6 (1973), pp. 14–44;
idem, ‘India and the Crimean War’, Journal of Imperial and Common-
wealth History, vol. 2 (1973–74), pp. 15–37; M.E. Yapp, ‘British Per-
ceptions of the Russian Threat to India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 21
(1987), pp. 647–65; Christian Tripodi, ‘Grand Strategy and the Graveyard
of Assumptions: Britain and Afghanistan, 1839–1919’, Journal of Strate-
gic Studies, vol. 33 (2010), pp. 701–25.
34 Adrian Preston, ‘The Eastern Question in British Strategic Policy During
the Franco-Prussian War’, Canadian Historical Association Historical
Papers, vol. 5 (1972), pp. 55–88; idem, ‘Sir Charles MacGregor and the
Defence of India, 1857–77’, Historical Journal, vol. 12 (1969), pp. 58–77;
Keith Jeffery, ‘The Eastern Arc of Empire: A Strategic View, 1850–1950’,
Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 5 (1982), pp. 531–45; Robert Johnson,
‘Russians at the Gates of India? Planning the Defence of India, 1885–
1900’, Journal of Military History, vol. 67 (2003), pp. 697–744; idem,
‘The Penjdeh Crisis and Its Impact on the Great Game and the Defence of
India, 1885–97’, PhD, University of Exeter, 2000.
35 T. A. Heathcote, ‘British Policy and Baluchistan, 1854–76’, PhD, Univer-
sity of London, 1969; A. Bali, ‘The Russo-Afghan Boundary Demarcation,
1884–95: Britain and the Russian Threat to the Security of India’, PhD,
University of Ulster, 1986; G. Tealakh, ‘The Russian Advance in Central
Asia and the British Response, 1834–84’, PhD, University of Durham,
1991; S. Dutta, ‘Strategy and Structure: A Case Study in Imperial Policy
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 41
and Tribal Society in British Baluchistan, 1876–1905’, PhD, University of
London, 1991; C. M. Wyatt, ‘Afghanistan in the Defence of India, 1903–
15’, PhD, University of Leeds, 1995.
36 See also Ian F. W. Beckett, ‘Cavagnari’s Coup de Main’, Soldiers of the
Queen, vol. 82 (1995), pp. 24–28.
37 Brian Robson, ‘The Eden Commission and the Reform of the Indian
Army, 1879–95’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
vol. 60 (1982), pp. 4–13.
38 See also Oliver Pollak, ‘A Mid Victorian Controversy: The Case of the
Combustible Commodore and the Second Anglo-Burma War, 1851–52’,
Albion, vol. 10 (1978), pp. 171–83.
39 See Ian F. W. Beckett, ‘The Indian Expeditionary Force on Malta and
Cyprus, 1878’, Soldiers of the Queen, vol. 76 (1994), pp. 6–11.
40 See also Tim Moreman, ‘The British and Indian Armies and North West
Frontier Warfare, 1849–1914’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, vol. 20 (1992), pp. 35–64; idem, ‘The Arms Trade and the North
West Frontier Pathan Tribes, 1890–1914’, Journal of Imperial and Com-
monwealth History, vol. 22 (1994), pp. 187–216; idem, ‘The Army in
India and the Military Periodical Press, 1830–98’, in David Finkelstein
and Douglas Peers (eds.), Negotiating India in the Nineteenth Century
Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 210–32.
41 W. Murray Hogben, ‘British Civil-Military Relations on the North West
Frontier of India’, in Adrian Preston and Peter Dennis (eds.), Swords and
Covenants (London: Croom Helm, 1976), pp. 123–46.
42 R. O. Christensen, ‘Conflict and Change Among the Afridis, and Tribal
Policy, 1839–1947’, PhD, University of Leicester, 1987; idem, ‘Tribesmen,
Government and Political Economy on the North West Frontier’, in Bar-
bara Ingham and Colin Simmons (eds.), Development Studies and Colo-
nial Policies (London: Frank Cass, 1987), pp. 175–93; idem, ‘Tradition
and Change on the North West Frontier’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 16
(1982), pp. 159–66; Timothy Holt, ‘Dealing with the Tribes: Political
Officers and Expansion on the North East Frontier of India, 1826–1914’,
M.St., University of Oxford, 2012.
43 See Brian Robson, ‘The Strange Case of the Missing Official History’, Sol-
diers of the Queen, vol. 76 (1984), pp. 3–6.
44 See also Rodney Atwood, ‘“So Single-minded a Man and So Noble-
hearted a Soldier”: Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar, Waterford
and Pretoria’, in Ian F. W. Beckett (ed.), Victorians at War: New Perspec-
tives (Society for Army Historical Research Special Publication No. 16,
2007), pp. 59–74.
45 Heather Streets, ‘Military Influence in Late Victorian and Edwardian Pop-
ular Media: The Case of Frederick Roberts’, Journal of Victorian Culture,
vol. 8 (2003), pp. 231–56; Ian F. W. Beckett, ‘Soldiers, the Frontier and
the Politics of Command in British India’, Small Wars and Insurgencies,
vol. 16 (2005), pp. 280–92; Rob Johnson, ‘General Roberts, the Occupa-
tion of Kabul, and the Problems of Transition, 1879–80’, War in History,
vol. 20 (2013), pp. 300–22.
46 Tim Moreman, ‘Lord Kitchener, the General Staff and the Army in India,
1902–14’, in David French and Brian Holden Reid (eds.), The British
General Staff: Reform and Innovation, 1890–1939 (London: Frank Cass,
42 Ian F. W. Beckett
2002), pp. 57–74; Benjamin Gillon, ‘British Planning for the Defence of
India and the Reorganisation of the Indian Army, 1902–15’, PhD, Univer-
sity of Glasgow, 2008.
47 See also DeWitt Ellinwood, ‘Ethnicity in a Colonial Asian Army: British
Policy, War and the Indian Army, 1914–18’, in DeWitt Ellinwood and
Cynthia Enloe (eds.), Ethnicity and the Military in Asia (London: Transac-
tion Books, 1981), pp. 89–143.
48 Jeffery Greenhut, ‘Race, Sex and War: The Impact of Race and Sex on
Morale and Health Services for the Indian Corps on the Western Front,
1914’, Military Affairs, vol. 45 (1981), pp. 71–4; idem, ‘The Imperial
Reserve: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–15’, Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 12 (1983), pp. 54–73; idem,
‘The Imperial Reserve: The Indian Infantry on the Western Front, 1914–
18’, PhD, University of Kansas, 1978.
49 I.D. Leask, ‘The Expansion of the Indian Army during the Great War’,
PhD, University of London, 1989.
50 Mark Harrison, ‘Disease, Discipline and Dissent: The Indian Army in
France and England, 1914–15’, in Mark Harrison, Roger Cooter and
Steve Sturdy (eds.), Medicine and Modern Warfare (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1999), pp. 185–203.
51 Susan VanKoski, ‘Letters Home 1915–16: Punjabi Soldiers Reflect on War
and Life in Europe and Their Meanings for Home and Self’, International
Journal of Punjab Studies, vol. 2 (1995), pp. 43–63; Tan Tai-Yong, ‘An
Imperial Home Front: Punjab and the First World War’, Journal of Mili-
tary History, vol. 64 (2000), pp. 371–410.
52 Andrew Tait Jarboe, ‘Soldiers of Empire: Indian Sepoys in and Beyond the
Imperial Metropole During the First World War, 1914–19’, PhD, North-
eastern University, 2013.
53 R.A. McLain, ‘The Body Politic: Imperial Masculinity, the Great War and
the Struggle for the Indian Self, 1914–18’, PhD, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 2002.
54 Nikolas Gardner, ‘Sepoys and the Siege of Kut-al-Amara, 1915–16’, War
in History, vol. 11 (2004), pp. 307–26; Kaushik Roy, ‘The Army in India
in Mesopotamia from 1916 to 1918: Tactics, Technology and Logistics
Reconsidered’, in Ian F. W. Beckett (ed.), 1917: Beyond the Western Front
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 131–58. See also E. Latter, ‘The Indian Army
in Mesopotamia, 1914–18’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical
Research, vol. 72 (1994), pp. 92–102, 160–79, 232–46.
55 See also Mark Jacobsen, ‘Only by the Sword: British Counterinsurgency in
Iraq, 1920’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 2 (1991), pp. 323–63.
56 Nicholas Tarling, ‘The Singapore Mutiny, 1915’, Journal of the Malaysian
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 55 (1982), pp. 26–59; R. W. E.
Harper and H. Miller, Singapore Mutiny (Singapore: Oxford University
Press, 1984); Ian F. W. Beckett, ‘The Singapore Mutiny of February 1915’,
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, vol. 62 (1984),
pp. 132–55; Tilak Raj Sareen (ed.), Secret Documents on the Singapore
Mutiny, 1915 (New Delhi: Mounto Publishing House, 1995); Christine
Doran, ‘Gender Matters in the Singapore Mutiny, 1915’, Sojourn, vol. 17
(2002), pp. 76–93; Kuwajima Sho, Mutiny in Singapore: War, Anti-war
and the War for India’s Independence (New Delhi: Rainbow Publishers,
 The Indian Army: a historiographical reflection 43
2006); idem, ‘Indian Mutiny in Singapore, 1915: People Who Observed
the Scene and People Who Heard the News’, New Zealand Journal of
Asian Studies, vol. 11 (2009), pp. 375–84; Leon Comber, ‘The Singapore
Mutiny (1915) and the Genesis of Political Intelligence in Singapore’, Intel-
ligence and National Security, vol. 24 (2009), pp. 529–41; Tim Harper,
‘Singapore 1915 and the Birth of the Asian Underground’, Modern Asian
Studies vol. 47 (2013), pp. 1782–1811.
57 Raymond Callahan, ‘The Indian Army, Total War and the Dog That
Didn’t Bark in the Night’, in Hathaway (ed.), Rebellion, Repression, Rein-
vention, pp. 119–30.
58 Mark Jacobsen, ‘The Modernisation of the Indian Army, 1925–39’, PhD,
University of California, 1979.
59 Nick Lloyd, ‘The Amritsar Massacre and the Minimum Force Debate’,
Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 21 (2010), pp. 382–403; idem, ‘Sir
Michael O’Dwyer and Imperial Terrorism in the Punjab, 1919’, South
Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 33 (2010), pp. 363–80.
60 Srinath Raghaven, ‘Protecting the Raj: The Army in India and Internal
Security, 1919–39’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 16 (2005), pp. 253–
79; Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘In Aid the Civil Power: The Colonial Army in
Northern India, 1919–42’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth His-
tory, vol. 32 (2004), pp. 41–68; Simeon Shoul, ‘Soldiers, Riot Control
and Aid to the Civil Power in India, Egypt and Palestine, 1919–39’, Small
Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 36 (2008), pp. 120–39; idem, ‘Soldiers, Riot
Control and Aid to the Civil Power in India, Egypt and Palestine, 1919–
39’, PhD, University of London, 2006.
61 D. George Boyce, ‘From Assaye to The Assaye: Reflections on British Gov-
ernment, Force and Moral Authority in India’, Journal of Military His-
tory, vol. 63 (1999), pp. 643–68.
62 N. Narain, ‘Co-option and Control: The Role of the Colonial Army in
India, 1918–47’, PhD, University of Cambridge, 1993; Susan VanKoski,
‘The Indian Ex-soldier from the Eve of the First World War to Independ-
ence and Partition: A Study of Provision for Ex-soldiers and the Ex-sol-
dier’s Role in Indian National Life’, PhD, Colombia University, 1996.
63 See also Tim Moreman, ‘Small Wars and Imperial Policing: The British
Army and the Theory and Practice of Colonial Warfare in the British
Empire, 1919–39’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 19 (1996), pp. 105–31;
idem, ‘Watch and Ward: The Army in India and the North West Frontier’,
in Killingray and Omissi (eds.), Guardians of Empire, pp. 137–56; Alan
Warren, ‘Bullocks Treading Down Wasps? The British Army in Waziristan
in the 1930s’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 20 (1997),
pp. 35–56.
64 Edward Spiers, ‘The Use of the Dum-Dum Bullet in Colonial Warfare’,
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 13 (1985), pp. 157–
84; idem, ‘Gas and the North West Frontier’, Journal of Strategic Studies,
vol. 6 (1983), pp. 94–112.
65 Lesley Jackman, ‘Afghanistan in British Imperial Strategy and Diplomacy,
1919–41’, PhD, University of Cambridge, 1978; J.C. Rawson, ‘The Role
of India in Imperial Defence Beyond Her Frontiers and Home Waters,
1919–39’, DPhil, University of Oxford, 1976; Brandon Marsh, ‘Ramparts
of Empire: India’s North West Frontier and British Imperialism, 1919–47’,
44 Ian F. W. Beckett
PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 2009; Keith Jeffery, ‘An English Bar-
rack in the Oriental Seas? India in the Aftermath of the First World War’,
Modern Asian Studies, vol. 15 (1981), pp. 369–86; Pradeep Barua, ‘Strate-
gies and Doctrine of Imperial Defence: Britain and India, 1919–45’, Jour-
nal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 25 (1997), pp. 240–66.
66 See also Christian Tripodi, ‘Peace-making Through Bribes or Cultural
Empathy: The Political Officer and Britain’s Strategy Towards the North
West Frontier, 1901–1945’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 31 (2008),
pp. 123–51; idem, ‘Good for One but Not the Other: The Sandeman Sys-
tem of Pacification as Applied to Baluchistan and the North West Frontier,
1871–1947’, Journal of Military History, vol. 73 (2009), pp. 767–802. For
Burma, see Robert Taylor, ‘Colonial Forces in British Burma: A National
Army Postponed’, in Tobias Rettig and Karl Hack (eds.), Colonial Armies
in Southeast Asia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), pp. 195–210.
67 See also Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context: A Case
Study of the Indian Army During World War Two’, Journal of Military
History, vol. 73 (2009), pp. 497–530; Tarak Barkawi, ‘Culture and Com-
bat in the Colonies: The Indian Army in the Second World War’, Journal
of Contemporary History, vol. 41 (2006), pp. 325–55.
68 Alan Warren, ‘The Indian Army and the Fall of Singapore’, in Brian Farrell
and Sandy Hunter (eds.), Sixty Years on: The Fall of Singapore Revisited
(Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2003), pp. 270–89.
69 Chandar Sundaram, ‘A Paper Tiger: The Indian National Army in Battle,
1944–45’, War and Society, vol. 13 (1995), pp. 35–59.
70 R. B. Osborn, ‘Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck: The Indian Army
and the Partition of India’, PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 1994.
71 See also Robin Jeffrey, ‘The Punjab Boundary Force and the Problem of
Order, August 1947’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 8 (1974), pp. 491–520.
2 Sepoys and sebundies
The role of regular and paramilitary
forces in the construction of
colonialism in Bengal,
c. 1765–c. 1820
James Lees

Both modern historians and contemporary Anglo-Indian commenta-

tors have placed great emphasis on the role of the British East India
Company’s (EIC) army in establishing and consolidating colonial
authority over a vast Indian population, particularly its importance
in countering violent resistance from within civil society. This chap-
ter aims to refine that view through an examination of the EIC’s
deployment of its regular and paramilitary forces in Bengal during
the half-century after 1765, the year in which the Mughal Emperor
granted it the diwani (revenue-collecting rights) of Bengal. It seeks
to demonstrate that the regular army was not widely used to police
Indian society, and that this role was principally undertaken by a vari-
ety of paramilitaries who have largely been ignored in the modern
historiography. It will examine the reasoning behind the EIC’s desire
to limit the forces available to its district officials, investigating the
consequences of this policy for the nature of local administration in
late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Bengal, and on the devel-
opment of the early EIC state more widely.
The grant of the diwani revolutionized the EIC’s standing as a ter-
ritorial power, presenting it with the opportunity of accumulating vast
wealth through the taxation of Bengal’s inhabitants. Simultaneously, it
necessitated the provision of far larger armed forces, both regular and
paramilitary, than had previously been required. These were needed
to ensure the steady generation and collection of territorial revenue by
protecting the province’s frontiers from external threats, and its hin-
terland from the disruption caused by internal disaffection. The EIC’s
regular army was initially an insignificant body, only a few hundred
strong and tasked simply with protecting its factories and outposts
from opportunistic bandits and the depredations of commercial rivals
and Indian powers.1 From the middle of the eighteenth century, how-
ever, these small garrisons swiftly grew into a very substantial and
46 James Lees
efficient armed force. During the late 1740s, the EIC began to regulate
its troops through the introduction of a system of martial law based
upon that used by the contemporary British (Crown) Army.2 The units
hastily raised and organized by Clive following the recapture of Cal-
cutta in 1757 formed the core of what was to become the Bengal Army,
but it was only as the EIC developed as a territorial power in north-
ern India after 1765 that this force began to be seriously augmented.3
Approximately 25,000 troops, mainly sepoys (Indian infantrymen),
were enrolled in the army of the Bengal Presidency by 1768. By 1805
that figure had risen to 64,000, at which point the EIC’s Indian Army
(the combined armed forces of the Bengal, Bombay and Madras presi-
dencies) numbered more than 150,000 men.4
This rapid expansion of the EIC’s military establishment occurred
in tandem with its massive acquisition of territory through a series of
conflicts with Indian powers, notably the Maratha Confederacy and
Mysore, over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Having defeated the forces of these powers, it was neces-
sary for the army to pacify the region, to ensure the smooth running
of local government until the populace grew more accustomed to, and
compliant with, the EIC’s rule. In the 1820s, the Anglo-Indian soldier-
administrator Sir John Malcolm proclaimed that the army was the
‘collateral means by which the great fabric of our power in India . . .
[is] . . . supported’.5 For Malcolm, there was no doubt that colonial
rule in India was sustained mainly by an Indian belief in the reach and
power of the EIC state, and that a great factor in maintaining that
opinion lay in the widespread ‘dread of our arms’ among the Indian
population at large.6
Writing on the EIC’s forces in the late eighteenth century, Ray-
mond Callahan has observed that ‘even in times of nominal peace the
strength of the Indian Army remained high’ because ‘hunting down
and dispersing bands of plunderers . . . coercing refractory local chief-
tains, and “revenue work” made continual demands upon the Com-
pany’s forces’.7 It is the purpose of this chapter to critique the idea
that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Indian Army was
a de facto military police force, imposing the EIC’s will on its newly
acquired, and fractious, civil population. Obvious though the link
would appear to be, the simple fact of the army’s existence does not
equate to it having been the key instrument in combating low-level
indigenous resistance within the colonial state. As the next section will
demonstrate, in contrast with the practice common to British India
after the late 1810s – by which point the EIC’s military and political
dominance had been established – from the late 1760s until the early
 Sepoys and sebundies 47
1800s the central colonial authorities at Fort William consistently
shied away from using their regular army to suppress disorder and
resistance among their Indian subjects.

I
Douglas Peers, in his analysis of the EIC’s military dispositions in India
after the 1810s, has observed that: ‘The army’s role as a gendarmerie
of last resort is attested to by the geographical distribution of troops
and garrisons . . . troops were not concentrated along India’s vulnera-
ble frontier. Instead they were scattered across India in small garrisons,
where they were in a position to monitor local society and if needs be
stamp out any signs of resistance.’8 The annual Bengal military state-
ments of the late 1810s confirm this view of the army as scattered
piecemeal across the subcontinent, and support the idea that its wide-
spread deployment was designed to expose as much of the population
to it as possible, thereby maximizing its power as a deterrent against
civil insurrection. Throughout the period after 1765, the overwhelm-
ing majority of the EIC’s armed forces were regular sepoy infantry,
with a small number of European battalions9 and limited cavalry and
artillery.10 An examination of the regular sepoy and the few European
(EIC and Crown) foot regiments serving with the Bengal Army during
1820 reveals that the 60 battalions serving in mainland India11 were
distributed between 71 different posts in garrisons ranging from one
company to a maximum of just four battalions (Barrackpur);12 only 13
of the garrisons were more than a battalion strong, and, of these, only
six were composed of more than two battalions.13
These statistics clearly support Peers’s observations on the widely
dispersed distribution of the Anglo-Indian military after the later
1810s. However, they contrast strongly with the marked trend in mili-
tary dispositions apparent during the previous 50 years. Although in
the regular infantry figures for 1815, 1810, and, to an extent, 1805,
one may observe a similarly diffuse pattern of distribution,14 for the
period between the early 1760s and the early 1800s a rather different
set of principles appears to have determined the siting and composi-
tion of garrisons.
In 1763, the EIC had 9,494 sepoys and 632 European infantrymen
in Bengal, based at 11 posts, of which six contained approximately
1,000 or more men, and the remainder (with the exception of the bat-
talion at Chittagong) were outposts of companies or half-companies.15
The Bengal Army’s infantry corps grew rapidly, reaching 25,158 in
1772.16 By 1777, its hugely increased size makes clearer the pattern,
48 James Lees
suggested by the ratio of soldiers to posts in 1763, in which a con-
siderable part of the army’s strength was concentrated in a few, very
large garrisons. The returns of that year show that the army’s 30 bat-
talions of infantry (Indian and European) were distributed between 14
posts. Nine of these were garrisoned by single battalions, leaving 21
battalions (70 per cent of the Bengal Army’s infantry strength) con-
centrated at just five posts, while eight battalions (nearly 30 per cent
of the infantry) were stationed at just one post (Bilgram in Awadh).17
This pattern of distribution continued with the growth of the army
in the following decade. In 1785 there were 44 battalions of infan-
try (Indian and European) on the Bengal establishment, distributed
between 19 posts, none of which was garrisoned by less than a battal-
ion.18 Two-thirds of this infantry were based at just five posts: the can-
tonments of Baharampur, Barrackpur and Kanpur, and the two forts
of Chunar and Fatehgarh. The distribution remained nearly identical
for 1787.19 In 1792, 18 of the 43 infantry battalions were based at
just four posts: Baharampur, Barrackpur, Dinapur and Kanpur, with a
further six battalions away serving against Mysore. The remaining 19
battalions were distributed either singly or in pairs at 13 posts.20 The
pattern continues in the figures for 1800, although with a lessening in
the troop concentration: of 30 battalions, one-third was based at just
three posts (Chunar, Kanpur and Midnapur), with the remaining 20
battalions distributed between 18 posts.21 By 1805 the distribution
shifts towards the pattern observed by Peers,22 with a move towards
the deployment of many more, smaller garrisons which were dispersed
across north India, as was to become the norm for the Bengal Army
over the subsequent decades.23
Even allowing for the detachment of large sections of the Bengal
Army on foreign service, the statistics for the period between the early
1760s and the early 1800s indicate Fort William’s distinct preference,
as far as practical exigencies permitted, for relatively few, but large,
garrisons across northern India. During the first 50 years of EIC rule,
frequent conquests massively increased the territory under its control.
Necessarily, the size of its army increased in tandem: in 1805 the EIC’s
Indian Army was more than eight times larger than its predecessor of
1763.24 Yet, it was now being deployed in smaller and smaller gar-
risons. Indeed, if one looks at the 1820 figures, five of the six largest
posts had fewer than four battalions each, and these were deployed
not in the Bengal Presidency, but in or immediately adjacent to the
central western territories recently seized from the Marathas, which
still required a relatively high concentration of troops for pacification,
and which now formed the EIC’s north-west frontier.25 More than
 Sepoys and sebundies 49
two-thirds of the Bengal Army’s infantry were deployed across the
presidency in formations of less than two battalions, and one-third
of its total infantry strength was deployed in sub-battalion groupings.
The argument for the later period is that the wider dispersal of troops
in smaller garrisons was an indicator of Fort William’s desire to moni-
tor Indian society more closely and to enhance public exposure to its
military might. If this is accepted, then it raises questions regarding the
rationale behind the earlier policy of concentration and the reasons for
the shift away from it during the first quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury. In answering those questions, it is necessary to examine both the
physical positioning of the garrisons and their composition.
A geographical analysis of the deployment of the Bengal Army and
its embedded Crown forces between the 1760s and the early 1800s
demonstrates a clear bias in favour of positioning large garrisons on,
or in very close proximity to, the Ganges and its major tributaries.
The six largest, and most consistently used, military posts during this
period were on the Ganges itself (Chunar, Fatehgarh and Kanpur),
on its Hugli tributary (Barrackpur and Fort William) or on its source
stream, the Bhagirathi (Baharampur). The overwhelming majority of
the smaller posts, such as Allahabad, Anupshahr, Benares and Munger,
were similarly located. It is notable that a significant proportion of the
Bengal Army’s force was actually deployed beyond the geographical
boundaries of the Bengal Presidency in this period. In 1763, nearly
a third of the EIC’s infantry was concentrated at Bilgram in Awadh;
in 1785, three of the five largest posts were Kanpur and Fatehgarh in
Awadh, and Chunar, to the south at Benares. Again, in 1800, the larg-
est garrison (including four regular sepoy battalions and the Crown’s
78th Highlanders) was at Kanpur; and in 1805, even without counting
the battalions serving in the forces assembled against the Marathas,
over three-quarters of Bengal Army’s total regular infantry strength
was deployed outside the presidency.
Such deployment suggests concern with a strategy to protect the
presidency from external threats, principally the Marathas, against
whom the EIC fought three wars between 1775 and 1818, rather than
with the internal policing of Bengal. Of course, the presence of large
bodies of EIC troops in adjacent client states did help to ensure the
loyalty, or at least the acquiescence, of their rulers; but this was more
of a diplomatic manoeuvre, designed to subdue potentially recalcitrant
rajas (Hindu rulers), rather than to prevent the criminal misbehav-
iour of their subjects. As Gerald Bryant has shown, for example, the
proximity of the EIC garrison at Chunar helped guarantee the Wazir
of Awadh’s continued payment of the war indemnity imposed on him
50 James Lees
following the Buxar campaign in 1764; it also served to maintain
Awadh as a ‘cost-free barrier to the restless “country” powers further
into Hindustan’.26
The defence of Bengal, beyond its frontiers, on the line of the Ganges
as it passed through Awadh and Benares, suggests that the potential
for using the presidency’s waterways to supply troops and to enable
their mobilization was thoroughly appreciated by the EIC’s military
planners. The course of the Ganges describes an arc from the north to
the south-east as far as Chunar, facing, during this period, the Mara-
tha territories to west. Beyond Chunar it goes on to bisect Bengal,
although it still provided a baseline from which operations could be
undertaken against the Maratha province of Berar to the south. In
north-eastern and north-central India, where the overland transporta-
tion of large bodies of troops was severely hampered by poor roads
and supply difficulties, the capacity to move its forces rapidly across
the province by river afforded the EIC a crucial strategic benefit.27 The
Ganges served a dual function, both as a medium of military trans-
portation and as a natural barrier which could hamper hostile forces
moving eastwards.28 This, combined with the (notionally) stabilizing
influence of EIC garrisons in client states, helps to explain why, and
how, the Bengal Presidency was being defended, to a great extent,
beyond its western frontier.
The high concentration of troops at relatively few posts, and the
physical location of these garrisons, suggest that, during this early
period, Fort William did not intend that the Bengal Army should act
as a military police force, quelling civil unrest across the presidency’s
rural hinterland. Prior to the first quarter of the nineteenth century it
was not dispersed across the EIC’s territory in a multitude of small
garrisons ‘to monitor local society’; in fact, a very substantial propor-
tion of it was not actually based in the EIC’s territory at all. While
Bengal Presidency’s borders with Bhutan, Burma and Nepal to the
north and east were rendered comparatively secure by the difficult
local terrain and the reasonably good diplomatic relations which Fort
William enjoyed with those states, the ‘vulnerable frontier’ on the line
of the Ganges was not. The concentration of the Bengal Army clearly
indicates that, at least until the EIC’s decisive victory in the Second
Anglo-Maratha War (1803–05), regular operations against indigenous
powers to the west and south were to be its prime occupation.
Drawing attention to the proliferation of many, small garrisons scat-
tered across India after the 1810s, D. Peers has argued that ‘the army
was the means through which peasant resistance could be checked,
either through direct punitive actions, or more usually by displays of
 Sepoys and sebundies 51
force designed to impress upon rural society the omnipotence of colo-
nial rule’.29 As has been shown earlier, this army distribution pattern
was in marked contrast to that which had prevailed during the previ-
ous 50 years; its concentration during the earlier period minimized
that section of the Indian population routinely exposed to theatrical
displays of military power. The difference in patterns of deployment
before and after the 1810s suggests that Fort William’s thinking with
regard to the policing of civil society, or at least the priority it accorded
to that function, was also different. The policy of concentrating the
army, apparently preserving it for regular warfare, casts much doubt
on its importance as an instrument of ‘military policing’ during this
period. If it was preserved chiefly for regular operations, then this in
turn prompts the question of what, if any, forces were employed by the
EIC for the routine coercion of Bengal’s rural population.

II
As the EIC gradually expanded its administrative control in Bengal,
following the grant of the diwani by the Mughal Emperor in 1765,
it had to take responsibility for suppressing violent disorder within
its new territory in order to secure the steady flow of taxes into its
coffers. Ostensibly, this policing function remained within the remit
of the Nawab (Muslim ruler) of Bengal – with whom, in theory, the
EIC shared governmental power – but it rapidly became apparent that
neither the Nawab’s government nor the local zamindars (Hindu land-
owning gentry) were able to guarantee the security of the mofussil
(countryside) at a level acceptable to the EIC.30 Consequently, the EIC
was drawn into a policing role, which entailed the provision of armed
forces to prevent resistance and disorder among the rural population
from disrupting the district administrations’ collection and remittance
of territorial revenue. Troops were needed to act as guards for local
treasuries and government offices, to escort convoys of specie and to
combat any disorderly groups that threatened the largely agrarian
economy of Bengal’s districts. They were also required to enforce the
collection of taxes from obstructive landowners.
The EIC’s large standing army might have seemed an obvious body
for this work, but Fort William was steadfastly against that solution,
and as late as 1795, Governor General Sir John Shore observed that
such a practice was ‘pregnant with Evils of a most serious nature’.31
For the upper echelons of the colonial administration, the deploy-
ment of regular troops in support of the district authorities was unde-
sirable on several counts. As has been seen, the EIC’s regular army
52 James Lees
was kept concentrated on the vulnerable frontier in western Bengal
to facilitate its rapid deployment against rival powers; distributing
it piecemeal across Bengal would greatly reduce the EIC’s capacity
to respond in strength to any threat moving eastwards from within
Hindustan. Furthermore, the discipline of troops split up into small
parties on detached duties would suffer, and some would be tempted
to take advantage of their independence to oppress the local populace
by extorting money and goods. Such problems had emerged among
the first troops which the EIC had raised for revenue service in 1766 –
Robert Clive’s pargana battalions – and the costly experiment was not
one to be repeated.32 Instead the EIC decided that, as any forces acting
in support of the district collector would most likely be ruined by the
nature of the service on which they were employed, it would be as well
to use the cheapest troops possible.
Consequently, following the disbandment of the pargana battal-
ions in 1770, and until the increasingly widespread deployment of the
Bengal Army following the EIC’s decisive victory over the Marathas
in 1805, the collectors of Bengal’s districts were supported by a het-
erogeneous assortment of paramilitaries. Units acting in this capac-
ity were commonly referred to as ‘revenue troops’ and were placed
at the immediate disposal of the district authorities. These forces
were composed of militia sepoys (mostly invalided regular sepoys)
until 1784, when they were replaced with cheaper ‘sebundy’ reve-
nue troops, poorly trained and equipped irregulars.33 Hereafter, until
the establishment of better quality ‘provincial battalions’ and wider
regular deployment during the early 1800s, the troops assigned to
this revenue duty were usually the unreliable sebundies, or, infre-
quently, regular Bengal Army formations.34 Auxiliary armed forces
could be levied by collectors (if Fort William permitted the expense)
through the local recruitment of barqandazes (mercenaries, occasion-
ally armed with matchlock muskets) or armed peons.35 In addition
to being of variable, and often dubious, quality, these revenue troops
were also frequently very few in number, with two companies (opera-
tionally, a total of perhaps 180 men) typically being assigned even to
major districts. Some collectors received no allocation of militia or
sebundies at all, and were wholly reliant on recruiting whatever mer-
cenary troops were available locally as the exigencies of their district
demanded. An example of the paucity of the forces allocated to the
districts may be seen in fact that by the mid-1780s – at which point
the infantry strength of the Bengal Army stood at some 40,000 of all
ranks – the paramilitary infantry allocated for revenue service was
scarcely one-tenth of that number.36
 Sepoys and sebundies 53
While the urgent necessity of reducing overheads profoundly shaped
Fort William’s policy towards provincial revenue duties, it is clear that
there were other forces at work. Concerns over the internal secu-
rity of British India and the EIC’s military reputation also provided
arguments both for and against the strengthening of this subordinate
branch of the armed forces, but these considerations alone do not
entirely account for the weakness of the establishments permitted by
the EIC to its local officials in the rural hinterland and on the fringes of
its territory. A further explanation for the consistent under-resourcing
of these district officials may be found in Fort William’s desire to exert
greater restraint on its diffuse and overextended state mechanisms.

III
The desire for the increased centralization of armed forces went beyond
the strategic deployment of the army at a provincial level and into the
internal ordering of the few revenue troops that were stationed in the
districts. For the central government, the lesson of the pargana battal-
ions had been clear: the dispersal of troops in small parties throughout
the mofussil hampered the maintenance of discipline, and, frequently,
resulted in bands of sepoys extorting bribes and otherwise mistreating
the population in the more remote parts of the EIC’s territory. The
practice of dispersal continued, however, during the 1770s, in which
period revenue collection duties were being performed by the mili-
tia. By 1783, the government was so incensed at its continuance that
the Committee of Revenue was forced to circulate a notice through-
out Bengal, exhorting the concentration of each district’s forces, and
threatening severe punishment if district chiefs and their military offic-
ers did not attend to the injunction.

The Honble Board having remarked that Seapoys are Often

employed in . . . trifling . . . Services & in Small Detachments &
Suffered to remain Singly or in small Parties for a . . . [length] . . .
of time at fixed-Stations without use or necessity . . . have posi-
tively forbidden this practice, & have declared their Censure &
disapprobation of it, with a Resolution to punish in an . . .
[exemplary] . . . manner every . . . [deviation] . . . from the above
prohibition.37

The harshness of this circular, and the frequency with which the issue
was referred to in correspondence from the central government,38
indicate the importance attached to the centralization of force by
54 James Lees
Fort William. However, it met with little immediate success, since the
various threats to the districts from border raiders, dakaits (bandits),
sannyasis and faqirs (respectively, armed Hindu and Muslim mendi-
cants), often occurred simultaneously. It was usually not possible to
bring the whole of the district’s body of revenue troops to bear on
one threat without dangerously weakening the local government’s grip
on another part of the district, perhaps even its administrative head-
quarters. The paucity of military resources available to district officials
meant that, even if their attempts to counter threats were limited to
preventing only the most significant disruptions to the revenue stream,
it was still necessary to distribute their troops among a number of
small independent commands.
The prohibition of this practice by Fort William was an attempt to
apply the policy of centralizing its armed forces at a subcontinental
level to the microcosm of the district. This was intended to reduce the
number of individuals in the EIC’s hierarchy who enjoyed the capacity
for undertaking significant, independent, violent action. A compro-
mise had to be found between the desirability of attempting to sup-
press all instances of resistance within a district and the risk inherent
in allowing so many individuals to exercise command of armed forces
in the EIC’s name without the direct supervision of a higher authority.
Fort William preferred that command be concentrated in the single
person of the district chief, rather than dispersed piecemeal among
the junior NCOs of his revenue troops by virtue of their isolation at
distant outposts. Yet, at the same time it expected that the district
revenues would be realized, meaning that, at the very least, the more
threatening instances of armed resistance had to be countered, and this
often demanded the despatch of troops to several sectors of the district
simultaneously, thereby forcing the collector to juggle the conflicting
directives of his superiors.
The principle of concentration, which preferred command of the
district’s armed forces to reside with the collector, as head of the dis-
trict, also extended to the place of that official within the EIC’s mili-
tary hierarchy as a whole. The district administration’s capacity to
extract revenue efficiently could be seriously hindered by allowing
local authorities only a handful of inferior quality troops for the imme-
diate security of their territory. Yet, there was an equal, if not greater,
danger in allowing these officials to have control of significant bodies
of soldiers. It was necessary to pitch the delegation of command at a
level which allowed the revenue stream to be secured while minimiz-
ing the harm that could be done through the actions of overambitious
or incompetent district administrators. A public reverse inflicted on a
 Sepoys and sebundies 55
large formation of soldiers engaged in revenue duties, whose officers
were subordinate to the district collector, would be especially dam-
aging to a government heavily reliant on its military reputation to
maintain order. But, by allowing that collector only a small body of
second-rate troops, Fort William limited the scale of operations he
would be likely to undertake, and, at worst, the loss of a handful of
paramilitaries in a skirmish would be proportionately less harmful to
the government’s capacity to impose rule. It was a question of choos-
ing between suffering a multitude of what were, on a pan-Indian scale
at least, relatively minor affronts to the government from perpetra-
tors of low-level resistance, or delegating greater power to covenanted
servants, who might sensibly defend the EIC’s interests, but who might
equally be prone to use armed force on a whim, without consider-
ing the wider implications of their conduct. The general line of policy
pursued by Fort William throughout the period can be interpreted not
simply as an attempt to reduce overheads by restricting the quantity
and quality of troops made available to district administrations, but,
by so doing, also to limit the capacity of its largely amateurish and
unreliable local officials for significant autonomous action.
Unsurprisingly, given Fort William’s preferred policy, the annals
of early colonial Bengal abound with examples of militarily under-
resourced collectors struggling to impose the government’s authority,
with the EIC’s wider interests suffering as a consequence. In 1777, at
Chittagong in east Bengal, the district’s chief, Francis Law, found him-
self unable to put down a rebellion by the Chakma people of the Hill
Tracts, and suffered a reverse. The 50 Chittagong sepoys who were
assigned to quell the disturbances failed utterly, even when confronted
with an enemy who, by Law’s own admission, ‘have not the use of fire
Arms, and whose bodys go uncloathed’.39 Consequently, the Chakma
general Ranu Khan was able to conduct a low-level, and economically
damaging, guerrilla war against the EIC that continued for several
years, causing ‘mass insolvence’ in the district’s revenues.40 Likewise,
when the dhing (peasant rebellion) broke out in Rangpur in north
Bengal in early 1783, the collector, Richard Goodlad, found that his
two companies of militia sepoys were insufficient to disperse the frac-
tious cultivators. After initially attempting to persuade them to stand
down through negotiation, he was eventually forced to concentrate
Rangpur’s sepoys at the district headquarters to avoid their piecemeal
destruction, thereby relinquishing control of much of the district to
the rebels.41 Perhaps even more tellingly, in 1786, Rangpur’s Collector,
William Amherst, faced by some 1,100 Nepalese border raiders and
faqirs, was able to field just 17 sepoys, of whom only 12 were armed
56 James Lees
with muskets, together with a score of barqandazes who were scarcely
armed at all.42 Nor was it simply dramatic episodes such as rebellions
and border conflicts that exposed the inadequacies of the district rev-
enue troops; the routine affairs of local government were also jeopard-
ized by the inadequacy of the forces allocated to district officials. In
1785, Matthew Day, the Collector of Dhaka, wrote to the Committee
of Revenue requesting permission to raise a force of ‘Pykes and Bur-
gundosses’ to replace the recently disbanded sebundies in undertak-
ing the ‘constant pressing’ which was necessary to make the district’s
zamindars pay their taxes.43 The sebundy corps had been superseded
by a battalion of regular sepoy infantry, but realizing that ‘to employ
regular Troops in the Excise of this Duty would not . . . meet with
the approbation of the Hon’ble Board’, he solicited the Committee
to allow 1,000 rupees a month for the maintenance of a paramilitary
force.44 He could use such a body as the exigencies of local government
demanded, whereas the dispersal of regular troops across his district in
any formation smaller than a company was strictly prohibited by Fort
William and would in all likelihood be resisted by their commander.
Yet, 14 years later, in 1799, the collector of Dhaka was still complain-
ing that the (now-reformed) sebundy sepoys at his station were not
sufficient to provide escorts for the ‘overland shipments of treasure’ to
Fort William. Consequently, he was, like his predecessor, forced to beg
the nearest regular sepoy battalions to furnish detachments for his use,
with varying degrees of success.45
The reckless decisions taken by some district collectors on the rare
occasions when they found themselves in possession of a substantial
armed force demonstrate fully the reasons for Fort William’s anxiety.
A prime example of this may be seen in the unauthorized invasion of
Nepal, in pursuit of raiders, ordered by the Rangpur Collector D. H.
McDowall, following the reinforcement of his district by a battalion of
regular Bengal sepoys in 1786.46 Yet, at the same time, some collectors
were wary of disbanding their local paramilitaries and using regular
troops when the army was employed on provincial duties, as there
was considerably less flexibility in the way in which the regular forces
could be utilized. Collectors could at least exert a measure of con-
trol over their paramilitary troops, whereas the army was answerable
primarily to the central government, and these regular detachments
might be suddenly withdrawn to meet a crisis elsewhere.
However, if Fort William was reluctant to employ the regular Bengal
Army as a force for the pacification of its territory, then the same could
not be said of its attitude towards its ex-servicemen. From the 1780s
onwards, much attention was directed towards the role of the EIC’s
 Sepoys and sebundies 57
invalid thanahs in securing rural areas against unrest. These thanahs
were the stations where EIC sepoys were settled with their families
after retiring from service, either through age or infirmity. Such settle-
ments of military pensioners served a twofold purpose. They were a
very public demonstration of the EIC’s worth as an employer, identi-
fying it closely with the Mughal practice of assigning rent-free jagirs
(land grants) to imperial retainers, and thereby lending it legitimacy in
the eyes of its Indian subjects.47 The settlements also represented ‘pock-
ets of influence’ for the EIC, and were particularly useful ‘for policing
Company territory and training its new recruits’ in frontier areas and
in the recently conquered Maratha domains.48 As with its employment
of paramilitaries, this was a key way in which the EIC minimized the
costs arising from the pacification of Bengal, and retained its army
for regular operations. The auxiliary function of the thanahs – as a
demonstration of the benevolence of the colonial authorities towards
collaborating groups – proved so valuable that the scheme was still
being fostered, indeed augmented, well into the 1820s, by which time
its importance as an instrument of policing had been much reduced by
the recent redeployment of the Bengal Army.49

IV
The function of the regular army within the structure of armed bodies,
which supported the EIC’s government in Bengal during the 50 years
after 1765, was not, then, principally, or even significantly, that of a
military police force. Nor were these duties fulfilled by an effective sys-
tem of civil police, extending upwards from paiks and dusadhs (village
constables) to kotwals (town police), the district faujdar (sub-gover-
nor) and, later, the darogas (the EIC’s Indian police officers following
Lord Cornwallis’s 1793 reforms). Throughout this period, the burden
of combating serious armed threats at a local level was borne by a
provincial paramilitary body, which, in its various incarnations, occu-
pied a position somewhere between the regular army and the pre-EIC
police network in the maintenance of the colonial state’s security.
Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, Bengal’s police
network was in disarray and the effects of Cornwallis’s sweeping police
reforms of the 1790s would take years to be fully felt. Moreover, as
has been seen, there was considerable reluctance on the part of Fort
William to spread the Bengal Army across the Bengal Presidency on
policing operations, particularly while major Indian powers continued
to threaten the EIC’s heartland. Until the 1810s, it was concentrated
principally in a few large garrisons in the west and south, leaving the
58 James Lees
northern and eastern districts of Bengal, from Rangpur in the north
to Chittagong in the south-east, comparatively lightly defended. Dirk
Kolff has argued that it was not until the 1810s, at which point the
EIC’s most powerful Indian opponents, the Maratha Confederacy and
Mysore, had been comprehensively defeated, that the colonial gov-
ernment could exert something approaching a monopoly on the use
of arms over its Indian subjects.50 It is surely no coincidence that, in
parallel with the EIC’s rise to political and military supremacy, we
see the greater dispersal of the army in many, relatively small and
scattered posts, explained by Peers as the army’s redeployment as a
police force ‘to monitor local society’. With the removal of the last
great Indian power which could seriously contend with the EIC for
the subcontinental hegemony, there was no immediate threat which
required the routine concentration of the army in readiness for mobi-
lisation, so now the secondary function of policing local society could
be attended to. This is not to imply that the regular army was now
charged with enforcing the law; the development of a more effective
civil police force after the 1810s, and the government’s longstanding
reluctance to use the army in that way, combined to ensure that this
was not the case. Rather, with the EIC’s paramount status confirmed,
it was, in the view of Fort William, both safe and fitting to disperse
the army throughout the Bengal Presidency in a multitude of garrisons
as a highly visible symbol of the colonial state’s coercive power. The
suppressing influence which the widespread dispersal of troops had on
Indian society certainly benefitted district administrators.
However, until this point in the early nineteenth century, the EIC’s
reluctance to dilute the strength of the Bengal Army in low-level ‘paci-
fication’ operations meant that district officials had to make do with a
secondary corps, variously composed of militia, sebundies or provin-
cial battalions, supported by whatever armed peons and barqandazes
could be recruited without incurring the wrath of Fort William. It was
with this force – undermanned and, in the main, badly trained and
equipped – that they were expected to impose the colonial govern-
ment’s authority, guaranteeing the operation of the civil, and later
criminal, courts, and, most importantly, safeguarding the revenue
stream from the disruption brought about by various kinds of civil
unrest.
The military context of the EIC’s colonial bureaucracy is central
to understanding the nature of early British rule in India, and the
interaction between the colonial military and bureaucratic arms
in this instance is perhaps surprising. Rather than using its large,
 Sepoys and sebundies 59
well-organized army as an instrument for the coercion of civil soci-
ety in support of government (as might have been expected), the EIC
actually under-resourced its local government militarily, for reasons of
economy, frontier defence, and also to impose checks upon the activi-
ties of its far-flung network of isolated officials. This exacerbated a
professional culture of extreme competition for potentially huge finan-
cial rewards, and led to a heightened concern among local officials
with their personal standing in the EIC’s hierarchy, rather than with
tackling the problems of governing a population which was, at best,
ambivalent towards them. While many of these district collectors were
daring in their efforts to enrich themselves personally, they were also,
for that very reason, often risk-averse in their governmental practice.
They needed, above all, to hold onto their posts in order to benefit
from their illicit perquisites. District collectors frequently ignored seri-
ous unrest among the local populace when this seemed safer than haz-
arding a chancy armed intervention, which might incur the wrath of
their superiors were it not completely successful. Such considerations
led to the widespread suppression of unpalatable information by local
officials, who, fearing censure and loss of position, were reluctant to
let the central government know too much about district affairs. This
practice – strongly informed by Fort William’s military dispositions –
acted against the penetration of Indian society by any effective colonial
bureaucracy until well into the nineteenth century, hindering the accu-
mulation of the ‘colonial knowledge’ needed to refine governmental
systems and procedures. It also continues to present problems today
for scholars using the often disingenuous and incomplete records of
the EIC’s early district bureaucrats.

Notes
1 The ‘Indian Army’ consisted of 500 men and 20 officers by the middle of
the eighteenth century. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British
in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1976), p. 15.
2 G. J. Bryant, The Emergence of British Power in India, 1600–1784:
A Grand Strategic Interpretation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), p. 45.
3 Ibid., p. 126.
4 R. Callahan, The East India Company and Army Reform (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 6.
5 J. Malcolm, The Political History of India from 1784 to 1823, vol. 1 (Lon-
don: John Murray, 1826), p. 7.
6 Ibid., p. 144.
7 Callahan, East India Company, p. 7.
60 James Lees
8 D. M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Gar-
rison State in Early Nineteenth Century India, 1819–1835 (London: I. B.
Tauris, 1995), p. 11.
9 In this period, the infantry battalion had a nominal strength of approxi-
mately 700 officers and other ranks, although in practice disease and
injury rendered large numbers unfit for duty. Indian service was particu-
larly hard for the EIC’s Europeans and the Crown regiments: on average,
between 1783 and 1787, the EIC European battalions were 33 per cent
under their nominal strength, and their British Army counterparts 53 per
cent understrength. See Callahan, East India Company, pp. 75, 148–9.
Until Cornwallis’s military reforms were (partially) implemented, each bat-
talion was numbered as a separate unit, but between 1796 and 1824, when
the structure reverted to the pre-1796 system, they were paired off to form
two-battalion regiments. This made very little difference in operational
terms, as the battalions rarely served together. The main effect of the Corn-
wallis reforms was hugely to increase the number of European officers
serving with regular Indian infantry units. Previously, it was common for
battalions to be commanded by a captain and an adjutant, with most of
the companies under the charge of Indian NCOs (the subedars and jema-
dars). After 1796, regiments were commanded by colonels, and lieutenant
colonels commanded battalions which were comprised of 10 companies
and staffed by a major, four captains, 11 lieutenants and 5 ensigns.
10 For example, in 1815, 75 battalions of regular infantry were serving
with the Bengal Army, but only 10 cavalry regiments (eight EIC and two
Crown) and three battalions of foot artillery. See the Bengal Military
Establishment Annual Statement 1814–15, L/MIL/8/24, pp. 1–13, India
Office Records, British Library (hereafter IOR, BL), London. This ratio
between the three arms of the service is fairly typical of the early EIC
period, if with rather more cavalry than had been usual in the preced-
ing decades. In 1767 the Bengal establishment contained 2,712 European
privates and NCOs (with 217 commissioned officers) and 22,087 sepoys
(with 1,176 Indian NCOs and 30 European commissioned officers), but
only 42 European cavalrymen and 298 sowars (Indian troopers). There
were also only 298 European gunners in the Bengal Army in 1767, with
Indian artillerymen not being employed until 1771. In that year there were
2,291 Indian gunners (with 296 Indian NCOs) and 330 European gunners
(with 41 commissioned officers and NCOs). See ‘Ninth Report from the
Secret Committee, appointed to enquire into the state of the East India
Company’ (1773), Reports from Committees of the House of Commons,
vol. 4, East Indies, 1772–1773 (London: House of Commons, 1804),
p. 506. The extra expense of maintaining cavalry regiments as compared
to infantry battalions, and the fact that it was not until the early 1800s
that the EIC began to control territory capable of producing large bodies
of high-quality horsemen, seriously limited that arm in the EIC’s service.
See Callahan, East India Company, p. 4.
11 There were actually 61 regular infantry battalions on the strength of the
Bengal Army in 1820 (30 double-battalion sepoy line regiments and the
single-battalion 1st Bengal Europeans). However, the second battalion of
the 20th Bengal Native Infantry Regiment was serving overseas: of its 10
companies, six were at Prince of Wales Island, two at Bencoolen, and two
 Sepoys and sebundies 61
at Singapore. Bengal Military Establishment Annual Statement 1819–20,
L/MIL/8/29, BL, IOR.
12 At this time a company of infantry on active service might be expected to
number some 100 men.
13 Bengal Military Establishment Annual Statement 1819–20, L/MIL/8/29,
BL, IOR.
14 In 1810, for example, there were some 60 battalions of EIC and Crown
infantry in mainland India, covering 62 posts in garrisons of between
one company and five battalions. See the Bengal Military Establishment
Annual Statement 1809–10, L/MIL/8/19, pp. 5–171, BL, IOR. In 1805
the figures seem to hint at an early adoption of the widespread deploy-
ment described by Peers. However, the figures are skewed by the absence
of 25.5 infantry battalions, away on service with the army assembled for
the Second Anglo-Maratha War. The remaining 41.5 battalions were dis-
tributed between 35 posts, and, other than the four battalions on service
in Bundelkhand, only 10 of these posts were more than a single battalion
strong and none had more than two battalions.
15 In 1763, Bengal’s regular sepoys were distributed as follows: Fort Wil-
liam (1,090); Gauhati (1,080); Patna: (2,822); Burdwan (969); Midnapore
(1,456); Chittagong [‘Islamabad’] (686); on service in Manipur [‘Meckly’]
(971); Lakhipur (121); Dhaka (121); Malda (57); Kasimbazar (121).
‘Ninth Report from the Secret Committee’, p. 509.
16 Ibid., p. 506.
17 Bengal Military Consultations, 22 January to 31 December 1777, ‘Dis-
positions of all troops under the Presidency of Fort William. Abstract of
officers from the returns of the army, August 31st 1777’ encl. 24 Septem-
ber 1777, pp. 161–62, IOR P/18/44.
18 Bengal Military (incomplete) and Civil Statement, 1784–85, pp. 122–72,
IOR L/MIL/8/1.
19 Bengal Military and Civil Statement, 1786–87, pp. 194–258, IOR L/MIL/8/2.
20 Bengal Military and Civil Statement, 1791–92, pp. 1–6, IOR L/MIL/8/6.
21 Bengal Military and Civil Statement, 1799–1800, pp. 2–6, IOR L/MIL/8/10.
22 In 1805, there were 68 battalions of regular infantry (EIC and Crown)
on the Bengal establishment: 25.5 were serving in the army fighting the
Maratha Confederacy, a further four were on service in Bundelkhand, and
the remaining 38.5 were distributed over 36 posts, ranging from five com-
panies to two battalions in strength. See the Bengal Military Establishment
Annual Statement 1804–05, pp. 214–21, IOR L/MIL/8/15.
23 Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, p. 247.
24 Callahan, East India Company, p. 6.
25 In this period, the Bengal Presidency was comprised of the province of
Bengal (present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh), as well as Assam,
Bihar, Orissa and Tripura.
26 Bryant, Emergence of British Power in India, p. 180.
27 G. J. Bryant, ‘Pacification in the Early British Raj’, Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History, vol. 14, no. 1 (October 1985), p. 3.
28 In this regard, the EIC was continuing the pre-colonial defensive system of
the subah (Mughal province) on its western frontier. Bryant, Emergence of
British Power in India, p. 155.
29 Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, p. 11.
62 James Lees
30 Bryant, Emergence of British Power in India, p. 182.
31 Secret Department, Minute and Resolution of the Governor General in
Council, 29 June 1795, BL, IOR F/4/8/709.
32 Governor-General’s Minute, 2 October 1783, BL, IOR, F/4/8/709. The
pargana was an administrative subunit consisting of several villages which
was used for revenue assessment purposes.
33 The term ‘sebundy’ (plural ‘sebundies’) was an Anglo-Indian word
used loosely during the eighteenth century to describe a body of troops
employed on revenue service, originating in the Persian sihbandi (sih
meaning ‘three’), and signifying three-monthly (quarterly) payments.
After the turn of the nineteenth century it became identified less with rev-
enue service than with the irregular (and often inferior) quality of troops.
As late as 1869 a corps of labourers raised at Darjeeling was denomi-
nated ‘The Sebundy Corps of Sappers and Miners’. See H. Yule and A.
C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: The Definitive Glossary of British India, K.
Teltscher (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 456.
34 J. Lees, ‘Retrenchment, Reform and the Practice of Military-Fiscalism in
the Early East India Company State’, in S. Reinart and P. Røge (eds.),
Political Economy of Empire in the Early Modern World (London: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 177–81.
35 Although the term barqandaz (lit. ‘lightning-thrower’) originally referred
to the early musketeers of the Mughal imperial armies, by the later eight-
eenth century it had also come to signify these mercenary troops who were
variously armed and trained. Their poor quality may be inferred from an
incident during the 1783 Rangpur dhing (peasant rebellion) in which an
EIC subaltern disguised his militia sepoys with white cloth, after which
‘the Ding allowed them to come very nigh taking them for Burgundasses,
whom they are not affraid of’. A. Macdonald to R. Goodlad, 22 Febru-
ary 1783, W. K. Firminger (ed.), Bengal District Records: Rangpur, vol. 3
(Letters Received: 1783–85) (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Record Room,
1920), p. 13.
36 Sebundy returns for 1785 in Bengal Military (incomplete) and Civil State-
ment, 1784–85, pp. 75–7, IOR L/MIL/8/1.
37 Revenue Committee Circular, 25 August 1783, Firminger, BDR: Rangpur,
vol. 3, p. 70.
38 Injunctions from Fort William to keep troops centralized were a common
feature of district correspondence in this period, often appended to any
communiqué concerning armed force, however tangentially. For example,
a letter to the collector of Dhaka on a vaguely related subject ends, ‘we
also desire that you will strictly adhere to the late Regulations as to the
mode of deputing Sepoys into the Mofussil.’ Committee of Revenue to M.
Day, 12 April 1784, in S. Islam (ed.), Bangladesh District Records: Dacca
District, 1784–1787, vol. 1 (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1981), p. 68.
39 Chief at Chittagong to Governor General and Council, 10 April 1777,
in S. Islam (ed.), Bangladesh District Records: Chittagong, 1760–1787
(Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1978), p. 239.
40 Ibid., p. 239.
41 R. Goodlad to A. Macdonald, 13 February 1783, in W. K. Firminger (ed.),
Bengal District Records: Rangpur, vol. 4 (Letters Issued: 1779–85) (Cal-
cutta: Bengal Secretariat Record Room, 1921), p. 133.
 Sepoys and sebundies 63
42 W. Duncanson to W. Amherst, 11 February 1786, W. Duncanson to W.
Amherst, 17 February 1786, in W. K. Firminger (ed.), Bengal District
Records: Rangpur, vol. 5 (Letters Received: 1786–87) (Calcutta: Bengal
Secretariat Record Room, 1927), pp. 16, 20.
43 M. Day to the Committee of Revenue, 15 February 1785, Islam, BDR:
Dacca, p. 121.
44 Ibid., p. 121.
45 E. Moore to Board of Revenue, 8 February 1799, BL, IOR, Bengal Rev-
enue Council, 6 January–24 February 1799, P/52/41.
46 D. H. McDowall to the Board of Revenue, 14 May 1786, in W. K.
Firminger (ed.), Bengal District Records: Rangpur, vol. 6 (Letters issued:
1786–87) (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Record Room, 1928), pp. 52–4.
47 Seema Alavi, ‘The Company Army and Rural Society: The Invalid Thanah,
1780 to 1830’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 27, no. 1 (February 1993),
pp. 154–6.
48 Ibid., p. 157.
49 Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition
in Northern India, 1770–1830 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995),
pp. 135–43.
50 D. H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Mili-
tary Labour Market of Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), p. 3.
3 Intelligence and
strategic culture
Alternative perspectives on the
first British invasion of Afghanistan
Huw J. Davies

Writing almost a century before the events discussed in the follow-

ing pages, soldier, diplomatist and politician Henry Seymour Conway
commented to his brother on ‘how this great world is the sport of
chance & how the powers of Europe seem to be playing a game of
Whisk for Empire . . . It’s really a miserable affair; & to one who reflects
seriously upon it the most mortifying proof of human littleness’.1 The
image of the Great Powers of Europe carving up territory for their
respective empires is an appealing one, evoking popular satirical car-
toons depicting representatives of the Great Powers posed with knives
and forks preparing to dissect a map of the world. Recent historiogra-
phy of the First Anglo-Afghan War has reflected these images, seeking
to present the British in caricature, as fumbling bumbling incompetent
idiots incapable of rational thought, hell-bent on personal gain and
imperial expansion, and fearful of a distant Russian menace, which, at
any moment, might descend in hordes upon India, throwing the Brit-
ish out of the subcontinent.2 Indeed, the majority of work on Britain’s
involvement in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century has sought to
frame it within the context of Great Power rivalry, specifically that
between Britain and Russia: the so-called Great Game.3 That there
was among the British political and military class a fear of Russian
expansionism cannot be denied, but the degree to which it was the pri-
mary cause of the invasion of Afghanistan can be questioned. It is easy
to conclude that Britain blundered into a costly invasion and occupa-
tion of Afghanistan if one maintains three assumptions: namely, that
the British were incompetent, there was no overall strategy and there
was a genuine belief that Russia posed a threat to British India. Set-
ting aside these assumptions, it is not so easy to make such a judge-
ment. Alternative explanations are therefore required. In fact, there
were at least three views of British Indian affairs in the late 1830s: the
view from London, the view from Lahore and the view from Calcutta.
 Intelligence and strategic culture 65
While they influenced each other, they should be considered separately.
Moreover, these views were based on the information, framed within
a pre-existing knowledge context, that London, Lahore and Calcutta
had at its disposal. Drawn from different sources, each centre had
different information at its disposal, which further complicated the
analysis conducted at each location.
The view from London largely accounts for the idea of Russia pos-
ing an existential threat to British India. The stories of unemployed
Russo-phobic British military officers painting pictures of imminent
disaster are well known. None perhaps better exemplifies this particu-
lar vein of paranoid thought than Lieutenant Colonel George de Lacy
Evans, who in 1828 published a pamphlet, On the Designs of Russia.
Coinciding with Russian military aggression against the Persians and
the Turks, De Lacy Evans feared that Russia, with an expansionist-
minded political establishment and military, would seize control of
Constantinople, and from there threaten British interests in the Medi-
terranean and India.4 Historians have recognized that, in the wake of
the Napoleonic Wars, a generation of glory-seeking military person-
nel, many of whom lived in relative penury on half-pay, were all too
willing to identify threats in the hope of advancing their own careers,
or those of close family members. The press, who, even in the nine-
teenth century were more than willing to promulgate alarmist stories
in the hopes of increasing circulation, picked many of these narra-
tives up. In the wake of the successful Russian military campaign of
1829, which saw the capture of Adrianople, The Times exclaimed that
‘the schemes of Catherine [the Great] have abundantly succeeded’ and
cited De Lacy Evans’s hyperbolic analysis of the threat from Russia
as evidence of what new horrors lay ahead.5 Such populist scaremon-
gering was hardly unusual, and it would be a mistake to assume that
the British government arrived at similar conclusions based solely on
the public and semi-public ramblings of military officers of question-
able integrity. After all, Palmerston, who was Foreign Secretary at the
outbreak of war with Afghanistan, had been Secretary-at-War during
the Napoleonic Wars, and had been on the receiving end of sharp
criticisms and exaggerated claims from personnel in the midst of war,
notably Wellington, whose claims of under-resourcing have been well
documented.6
If not from the military sphere, then, where did the British govern-
ment get its information on the possibility of a Russian threat to India?
The simple truth is the extensive web of intelligence networks that
existed throughout Europe. Part of the responsibility of every Brit-
ish embassy was to establish a network of spies and correspondents
66 Huw J. Davies
throughout the country they resided in. Though simplistic in nature,
during the Napoleonic Wars these arrangements had proven remarka-
bly effective.7 Information collected by correspondents (who remained
in single locations and made diaries of events), agents (who travelled
to strategically important locations) and spies (who often worked
for the governments of foreign countries whether they were enemies
or allies) was sent to the British ambassador or envoy. Rudimentary
analysis was conducted throughout the collection process, before the
ambassador, or more likely a secretary, cross-referenced the informa-
tion for consistencies. Anything deemed to be of sufficient worth was
transmitted back to London.8
The system became widely known as the ‘Family Embassy’, and was
run on a shoestring budget.9 Although it was drawn-down after the
end of the war in 1815, the trappings of the system continued to exist
throughout the nineteenth century. Hidden among the ordinary dip-
lomatic correspondence from ambassadors to virtually every country
on the planet, there lies a treasure trove of intelligence documents. It
is from here, then, that the British government obtained the majority
of the information upon which it based policy decisions. And unsur-
prisingly, the various envoys and ambassadors sent to St Petersburg in
the 1830s reported back intelligence findings that, despite significant
inconsistencies, allowed Whitehall to conclude that Russia had expan-
sionist interests in the south. One intelligence officer, who reported
on Russia’s designs on Constantinople in 1835, overheard a Rus-
sian court official predicting that, from Constantinople ‘we shall not
then be many hours from those English in India’,10 a comment that
appeared to justify De Lacy Evans’s earlier concerns. Such depictions
of the Russians as pantomime villains became more serious, however,
in 1837. The British Ambassador, Lord Durham, managed to secure
a spy in the Russian treasury.11 Thereafter, a seemingly disconnected
set of events started to make sense. In January 1837, the Russian gov-
ernment borrowed six million roubles to expand its naval presence in
the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. In February, Durham reported on
increased expenditure of trade missions to the Central Asian states.12
Then, came reports of money being spent on deepening parts of the
Volga between Astrakhan and the Caspian Sea in order to enable navi-
gation of the river by deep-draught vessels.13
In March, Durham was finally able to deliver comprehensive
accounts of Russian finances between 1823 and 1836. Durham
argued that the report enabled Britain to ‘judge correctly of [Russia’s]
strength and weakness, of her powers of offence and defence, and con-
sequently of the degree of importance which attaches to her political
 Intelligence and strategic culture 67
demonstrations, and to her general position in the scale of European
Powers’.14 They revealed that the Russian state was over Rs 390 mil-
lion in debt, mostly incurred during the recent wars with Persia and
Turkey. Interest payments on this debt amounted to over Rs 21 million
a year. Total revenue of the Russian state amounted to Rs 502 million,
while annual expenditure topped Rs 550 million, leaving a deficit of
Rs 48 million.15 While not necessarily a disastrous state of affairs for a
functioning economy, Russia’s annual income from foreign trade was
falling, and it was clear that this financial situation could not continue
for long. In order to pay this debt, significant increases in revenues
from foreign trade would be required. In Durham’s judgement, this
explained Russia’s increased interest in trade with the Central Asian
states. Simultaneously, the Russians received news that English goods
were now on sale in the bazaars (markets) of Bokhara and Tashkent,
goods that had come via Kabul and India.16 This clearly represented a
threat to Russian trading interests, Durham argued.
In April, Durham received an explanation for the deepening of the
Volga. ‘From St Petersburg by the Lakes of Ladoga and Illmen, and
thence by the Volga to Astrakhan, there is an uninterrupted water
communication,’ Durham explained. ‘In short, whatever there is of
manufacture in Russia can be transported by water to the Caspian.’
Moreover, he continued, ‘in the event of War with any maritime Euro-
pean Power, no interruption need be apprehended, and what is of
equal importance, supplies may also be drawn from this quarter in
security, of that raw material for her manufactures, for which she is
now dependent on the free passage of the Baltic and the Black Sea’.17
The implication was clear. In commercial terms, Russia was looking to
facilitate more effective trading ties with Central Asian states, a policy
that would clearly bring Britain and Russia into a direct commercial
rivalry. In military terms, a reliable and relatively speedy means of
communication and trade with Central Asia would afford Russia sig-
nificant strategic depth, and make it extremely difficult to attack her
indirectly. The seemingly incoherent ramblings of De Lacy Evans less
than a decade earlier, now began to look frighteningly realistic.
The only ‘obstacle to the success of these projects for the extension
of the trade and commerce of Russia in this part of Asia,’ Durham
argued, ‘is to be found in the barbarous and uncivilized state of the
Turcoman and other savage tribes in the vicinity of Asterabad’. Dur-
ham expected, however, that merely expanding economic opportunity
in the region would ‘sew the seeds of amelioration, and with the lapse
of time, must arrive a better state of things’.18 And if this did not hap-
pen, the option always remained for Russia to expand militarily into
68 Huw J. Davies
Central Asia: a waterborne trading route could also function perfectly
well as a waterborne military supply line.
All of this suggested increased Anglo-Russian commercial rivalry,
but in November 1837, the situation took on a distinctly military
character, when Persia invaded Afghanistan and began a prolonged
siege of the north-western city of Herat. In early January 1837, Palm-
erston had written to Durham with the news that ‘Count Simonich,
the Russian minister in Persia had urged the Shah to undertake a win-
ter campaign against Herat’.19 Palmerston instructed Durham to find
out if Simonich was acting under the orders of the Tsar, or if he had
begun acting independently of his instructions from St Petersburg. Pre-
dictably, the response from the Russians was that Simonich had acted
‘in direct opposition to his instructions’. Indeed, Durham wrote in late
February, ‘the count had been distinctly ordered to dissuade the Shah
from prosecuting the present war at any time, in any circumstances.’20
Durham was left ‘in little doubt that the result . . . will be the recall of
Count Simonich’.21
But, Simonich was not recalled. The British minister in Tehran, Sir
John McNeill, continued to write with ever-increasing prophecies of
doom. ‘The Russians habitually teach themselves to regard India as
near at hand & easily approachable,’ McNeill argued. ‘I can imag-
ine Count Simonich, though he is an intelligent soldier, so far deceiv-
ing himself as to suppose that Scinde is within the Shah’s reach as
soon as he shall have made himself master of Herat’, he continued.
‘Looking at the Russian and Persian Correspondence with Kanda-
har and Cabool, . . . and at the confidential communications which
pass between the Russian Mission and the Shah’s officers regarding
the conduct of his present operations, I cannot doubt that a concert
exists between the Persian & Russian Governments in regard to their
proceedings in Afghanistan; and that the object of both is hostile to
England.’22
This analysis chimed with Durham’s developing belief that Russia’s
interest in Central Asia was not limited to commercial advantage. ‘It
must also be remembered, with reference to . . . the invasion of India
by the Russians, that there are but two routes for that purpose, one
by Khiva, the other by Asterabad, and Afghanistan,’ Durham wrote
in late May 1837. ‘The successful prosecution of an expedition by
either of them, must depend on the cooperation of the Khivans and the
Toorkman tribes on the one side, and the Persians and the Afghans on
the other. This assistance is more likely to be afforded in consequence
of commercial ties, than from other motives.’23 Durham argued for
action to ensure that ‘these interests and feelings are enlisted on our
 Intelligence and strategic culture 69
side, in the first instance,’ rendering ‘any practicable movements on
the part of the Russian Army . . . impossible’.24
Durham was not arguing for a military response, but rather for a
strategy that would freeze Russia out of Central Asia. Strategically,
then, the British government in London was anticipating Russia would
begin acting aggressively, and her intelligence apparatus was directed
to find evidence of it. Durham’s agent in the Russian Treasury proved
an invaluable asset and helped piece together seemingly irrelevant
material. Facing considerable and increasing financial difficulty, the
Russian state began establishing safe, reliable and fast means of com-
munication with the lucrative markets in Central Asia. A riverine net-
work from St Petersburg to the Caspian would not only ensure the
security of this new commercial endeavour but would also remove
one of Russia’s key vulnerabilities, namely a threat from European
maritime powers to her sea-based trade in the Baltic and the Black
Sea. Such independence would afford Russia significant commercial,
and potentially military, power. For Britain, the balance of power in
Europe appeared to be in jeopardy. Palmerston had recognized this
in 1834 when he had suggested Russia would soon act aggressively.
‘We do not mean to break with her, by taking the offensive ourselves,’
he had written. ‘We wait ‘til she becomes the aggressor, knowing the
advantage of having to repel an aggression instead of being party to
make one. I mean the moral & political advantage.’25 Here, then, is
the influence of strategic culture on the view from London. It was
not necessarily concern about Russian aggression in Central Asia,
Afghanistan or even India that drove British foreign policy in Central
and South Asia; it was the prospect of increasing Russian power in
Europe. The cheapest way to stymie Russian power in Europe was
to curtail her power in Central Asia. Ideally, as Durham argued, this
would be achieved by establishing commercial ties with Central Asian
states before Russia was able to.
At the same time as events in northern Afghanistan suggested
increased Russian influence in the region, relations between Dost
Muhammad’s Kabul and Ranjit Singh’s Lahore were approaching
their nadir. If London seemed obsessed with Russian activities in Cen-
tral Asia, Calcutta by contrast cared little about the possibility of a
direct Russian threat to India. Rather, the Indian government observed
with increasing alarm events on its North-West Frontier. Kabul and
Lahore had been at loggerheads for the last decade. In some ways,
this situation suited Calcutta’s strategic ends. Ranjit Singh had exhib-
ited expansionist tendencies since he became Maharaja in 1799. Under
his stewardship, the Punjab had been transformed into a burgeoning
70 Huw J. Davies
economic and military power with a powerful and Europeanized army,
the Dal Khalsa, capable by the 1830s of challenging the East India
Company for control of the Cis-Sutlej states, as well as for influence
in Sindh.26 Indeed, the Sikh army was considered so powerful that the
East India Company sought to avoid conflict with it. When the British
Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Fane, visited Lahore for the wedding
of Ranjit Singh’s grandson, he was treated to an awe-inspiring display
of Sikh military power. He estimated the Khalsa’s strength between 60
and 70 battalions, 700 artillery pieces and a large cavalry contingent
of possibly 4,000 men.27 Moreover, the European drill demonstrated
by the Sikh warriors, in particular by the Fauj-i-Khas – the Royal Bod-
yguard – heightened concerns that in a conflict with the Sikhs, the East
India Company Army would prove unequal to the task of extending
British control over the Punjab.28
Instead, Calcutta opted for a strategy of containment, subtly foster-
ing conflict between the Sikhs and the Afghans. It was in the Com-
pany’s interests that a balance of power exists between the states on
the border of British India, so that no one state would become so pow-
erful that it might challenge British authority in India. ‘It seems very
doubtful whether such a division of rule as now exists in Afghanistan
is in any way hurtful to us’, wrote the governor general’s private sec-
retary, William Colvin, in May 1837. ‘Each state is strong enough to
maintain itself, and well disposed from position and interest towards
us. This may probably be more beneficial than the neighbourhood of
a very large and arrogant power.’29 This balance, while precarious,
was easy to maintain so long as the Afghans and the Sikhs diverted
one another from other expansionist agendas. In 1834, during an ill-
fated British-sponsored attempt to restore Shah Shuja to the throne of
Kabul, Ranjit Singh captured the Afghan summer capital of Peshawar.
Traditionally viewed as one in a lengthening list of British failures,
this in fact helped solidify the British containment strategy, by sow-
ing the seeds of ongoing discord. So long as Peshawar remained in
Sikh hands, Dost Muhammad Khan could never come to terms with
his old enemy, not least because the perceived weakness would con-
tinue to foster internal opposition to his own regime. In 1837, while
Ranjit Singh was celebrating his grandson’s wedding in Lahore, and
with the lion’s share of the Khalsa engaged in ceremonial activities
designed to impress the British, Dost Muhammad took the opportu-
nity to attempt to retake Peshawar. The Battle of Jamrud was a short-
lived affair. Despite outnumbering the Sikhs, the timely arrival of Hari
Singh Nalwa, the Commander-in-Chief of the Khalsa, caused signifi-
cant disquiet in the Afghan camp. A short skirmish led to a stalemate
 Intelligence and strategic culture 71
which lasted until news emerged that Hari Singh had been killed. By
then, reinforcements had arrived from Lahore, and Dost Muhammad
was forced to retreat.
To the British and the Sikhs, it looked as though Dost Muham-
mad had planned to raid into the north-west of India. The reality
was, of course, much more complex. Internal tensions and the fault
lines between and within tribal dynamics had created a situation that
had compelled Dost Muhammad Khan to act. There was little Dost
Muhammad could do but attempt to retake Peshawar, or he would
face an internal challenge to his own authority. As the British sus-
pected, he did not preside over a unified Afghanistan, but the situa-
tion was much worse than even they realized. For them, Afghanistan
seemed split between the contending authorities of Saddozai Herat
and Barakzai Kabul and Kandahar. Moreover, the divisions within the
Barakzais meant Dost Muhammad was unable to trust or rely for sup-
port on his brethren in Kandahar. The British badly misjudged the
balance of power in Afghanistan, believing Herat, rather than Kabul,
was the dominant centre of power.30 The Saddozai regime in Herat
was in fact weak and corrupt, facing internal and external enemies in
the form – as we have seen – of Persia.
From the outset, then, the British underestimated Dost Muham-
mad’s political strength, and by extension misunderstood the threats
to his authority. To the north of Kabul, Mir Murad Beg of Qunduz
maintained a constant challenge to Dost Muhammad’s authority in
Bamian. There, Murad Beg had persecuted the Hazara population,
forcing them to pay contributions of Rs 4 per household. Unable to
respond because of more pressing matters to the south, Dost Muham-
mad was ‘compelled to content himself with merely observing them in
silence’, which had caused the Hazaras to become disenchanted with
Dost Muhammad’s leadership.31 Elsewhere, serious challenges to his
authority existed in the Kohistan Hills to the north and east of Kabul,
and among the Ghilzais who had cut the road between Kabul and
Jalalabad. It was in response to armed robberies on this road that
Dost Muhammad had dispatched his eldest son Muhammad Akhbar
Khan to capture the culprits. When Akhbar captured the freeboot-
ers, the Ghilzais who had offered them sanctuary rebelled at the per-
ceived infraction of their rights. At this point, intelligence had been
received in Kabul ‘that Hari Singh with a large force . . . had arrived
at [Rawal] Pindi in his progress to Peshawar’.32 To Dost Muhammad,
it appeared as if the Sikhs were taking the opportunity to garrison the
fort at Jamrud permanently. Such an action would only inflame the
tribal tensions in the Khyber and Ghilzai regions, and further serve
72 Huw J. Davies
to weaken his authority. Under such circumstances, Dost Muhammad
had no choice but to act, because, as Malcolm Yapp argues, he ‘found
it politically impossible to refuse appeals for assistance which were
based upon Islamic and Pashtun tribal affinities’.33
The Political Officer Charles Masson communicated all of these
events to Calcutta, and their importance was not lost on the British.
The secretary to the Governor General, and his principal advisor, Wil-
liam Hay Macnaghten, found the intelligence ‘interesting as showing
the obstacles which the Amir Dost Muhammad Khan had to contend
with among his own people even previously to his engaging in actual
hostilities with the Sikhs’.34 For Macnaghten, the internal fractures
were evidence of the unstable nature of Afghanistan. ‘The state of par-
ties in Afghanistan’, he had written in January 1837, ‘seems to be such
as to preclude the probability for some time to come of the establish-
ment of a strong and united power in that quarter.’35
In such a situation, and facing internal political and socio-economic
difficulties that threatened his position, Dost Muhammad had cast
around for support from external benefactors. His preferred option,
Britain, appeared too closely aligned with the Sikhs, while they also
harboured his primary Saddozai competitor, Shah Shuja. Russia was
too distant to be able to offer efficient military support, and the Uzbek
and Tajik states immediately to the north of Afghanistan in any event
were too weak. The only remaining option appeared to be Persia. John
McNeill, Britain’s envoy to the court of the Shah in Tehran, wrote a
typically lengthy digest of the reasons behind a possible connection
between Dost Muhammad Khan and Persia. ‘Descended by his mother
from the Qizilbashes36 or Persians who have for some time past been
settled in Kabul’, Dost Muhammad had, McNeill explained, ‘con-
nected himself with that powerful lot and in any emergency must trust
rather to them than to the native Afghans for the means of pursuing
conquests or repelling aggressions’.37
Such a suggestion was patently absurd, but the timing of McNeill’s
evidence struck a raw nerve in Calcutta. So far the cold war that had
existed between the Sikhs and Afghans had prevented each from
obtaining enough power to challenge Britain. But if Dost Muham-
mad was seeking support from Persia (which was itself supported by
Russia), then this might change the balance irrevocably. ‘The British
Government could not recognize any right of interference’, wrote the
Governor General Lord Auckland, ‘by the Persian Monarch in the
affairs of Afghanistan.’ By the same token, ‘commerce can never flour-
ish amidst the horrors of war’, and it was the British aim that ‘tran-
quillity should be restored along the whole extent’ of the River Indus.38
 Intelligence and strategic culture 73
Dost Muhammad was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
On the one hand, the internal divisions that compelled him to wage
limited war against the Sikhs for control of the Khyber Pass and Pesha-
war indicated that his regime was so unstable that he might look to
external aggression in order to bolster his authority. Such actions had
been the mainstay of Afghan rule at the end of the eighteenth century.
The then ruler, Shah Zeman, regularly attacked south into the Punjab
and sometimes as far as Delhi. In response, Calcutta had sent an emis-
sary to Persia to ‘relieve India from the annual alarm of Shah Zeman’s
invasion’.39 Dost Muhammad’s attack on the Sikh fortress at Jamrud in
1837 was characterized in the same light. By attacking the Sikhs, Dost
Muhammad was forcing his people ‘to unite & fight for their . . . reli-
gion with an ardent zeal which’ was, as Captain Claude Martine Wade,
the British Political Officer deputed to Lahore and Ludhiana, explained
to Ranjit Singh, comparable to ‘the desperate efforts of a feeble animal
to save itself even against the power of man when its life was in dan-
ger’.40 In this light, then, the weakness of Dost Muhammad’s regime
was a threat to the balance of power on the North-West Frontier.
On the other hand, when Dost Muhammad sought external support
in order to overcome his internal difficulties, he was characterized as
a despot bent on self-aggrandizement. ‘It cannot be in our policy to
have a Sikh power on our frontier crushed by a strong Mohammedan
power’, Auckland wrote in June 1837.41 The potential strength of Dost
Muhammed’s Afghanistan was now also a threat to the balance of
power on the North-West Frontier. Similarly, Auckland worried that
should Dost Muhammed fail in his bid to wrest Peshawar from the
Sikhs, Ranjit Singh would take the opportunity to invade Afghanistan
through the Khyber Pass, predicting he would ‘conquer Kabul but not
subdue it, that he will give peace for tribute, and that he would return
a little more difficult to deal with than before he went’. Moreover,
‘he will possibly attempt to do all this quickly as he well knows that
reverses would raise many enemies against him.’42 Whether he suc-
ceeded or failed, Dost Muhammad would jeopardize the balance of
power. For the moment, Auckland was focussed on preventing a gen-
eral war between the Afghans and the Sikhs. British strategy depended
on a continuous state of tension, not the outright defeat of one or
the other. Auckland turned to the army as a means of deterring Dost
Muhammad, and, by extension, Ranjit Singh, from engaging in out-
right hostilities with one another. ‘I know that your sword will always
be ready,’ he wrote to his Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Henry
Fane at the height of the crisis, ‘and [it] being known to be ready will
tend to prevent the necessity of [its] use.’43
74 Huw J. Davies
Auckland, like Durham in St Petersburg, preferred a policy of com-
mercial penetration into Central Asia in order to offset the threat of
Russian expansionism. ‘I need not say that to any violent change’,
he wrote to McNeill, ‘I should much prefer the gradual extension of
our influence by means of commercial intercourse on the line of the
Indus and to the westward.’44 But the Sikh–Afghan conflict, and his
inability to control it, led Auckland reluctantly to consider the use of
military power in order to enact British policy. The traditional histo-
riography of the events that led Auckland to authorize the invasion
of Afghanistan focuses on the actions of a collection of political offic-
ers who were charged by Auckland and Macnaghten to collect intel-
ligence on the political situation in Afghanistan, Persia and the Punjab.
Faced with ever-increasing levels of uncertainty, Auckland appeared
to suffer some sort of mental collapse. His chief advisors on Afghani-
stan – Wade, Macnaghten, and the Political Officer-cum-adventurer
Alexander Burnes – have been depicted as self-serving and corrupt,
seeking to advance their own interests with little regard for those of
the British Empire or the East India Company.45 This is in part true,
and I do not propose a rehashing of this well-trodden path. Rather,
I want to point out some important and overlooked aspects of British
strategic culture in India that contributed to the decision to go to war.
First, it is worth highlighting that the influence of Russia in Afghani-
stan and Central Asia was a peripheral consideration for most policy-
makers in India. As Martin Bayly has recently argued, where Russia
was taken into consideration, it was within the context of European
affairs;46 that is to say, that British officials in India mentioned the Rus-
sian context in dispatches to London because that was what London
wanted to hear about.47 As has been seen already, and as South Asian
historians such as Ben Hopkins, and now C. A. Bayly, have pointed
out, the relationship between Afghanistan and the Punjab, with the
menacing presence of Persia in the background, was what dominated
policy discussions.48 In early 1836, for example, Henry Ellis, the then
British Minister in Tehran, wrote, ‘from Persia with greater dread of
Russian aggression’ than Auckland was ‘disposed to feel here [in Cal-
cutta].’ Auckland was deeply unconvinced by the analysis. ‘In direct
aggression I hold her [Russia] to be actually powerless, and in indirect
she can only become formidable under an exaggerated opinion of her
power,’ he wrote confidently. ‘In the meantime,’ he continued, ‘I look
to the extension of British power and influence in the direction of the
Indus much more to our merchants than our soldiers and I am san-
guine enough to hope that river may become a peaceable thoroughfare
for our commerce.’49
 Intelligence and strategic culture 75
To this end, then, Burnes had originally been dispatched to Afghani-
stan in 1836 on a commercial mission, and at that point, it was the
ruler of the Sikhs, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who gave more cause for
alarm than the leader of Afghanistan. ‘It is difficult to see without
some anxiety the exertions made on every occasion by the ruler of the
Punjab to extend his power’, wrote Auckland in his initial instruction
to Burnes. As a result, ‘all information from that quarter must be valu-
able, and it may not be useless ostensibly to mark that nothing which is
there passing is viewed with indifference by the British Government, or
escapes its notice.’50 The Indus, then, was considered by Auckland to
be the ‘natural frontier’ of British interest and influence, and his initial
perception was that it was Ranjit Singh that would need restraining.
The circumstances of Sikh–Afghan conflict over Jamrud illustrated the
salience of this concern. Auckland was frightfully worried that Afghan
failure would encourage Sikh expansionism, and vice versa.
In actual fact, the individuals that needed restraining were the politi-
cal officers themselves. As Malcolm Yapp has commented, political
officers viewed their deployment on fact-finding missions as the van-
guard of British political influence.51 Burnes, and his counterpart in the
Punjab, Wade, were no different, while the situation was made more
complex by intense jealousy between the two, so much so that one
acted to undermine the other on more than one occasion.
This was not a unique circumstance, however, and it is the first
aspect of British imperial strategic culture that is frequently over-
looked. Britain had from the late 1790s progressively expanded her
influence throughout the subcontinent. The most cost-effective and
efficient means of the exertion of this influence was through indirect
rule. Michael H. Fisher has demonstrated that British residents, civil
servants and increasingly military personnel who opted for political
service had to manipulate the rulers of the princely states over which
Britain exerted indirect rule.52 Inevitably this enticed a certain type of
individual into the political service, one looking for opportunities to
enhance their careers. The frontier residencies were the most coveted,
as they offered the greatest opportunity for intrigue and action, and
were usually the best resourced.
Burnes, Wade and their peers were successors to a generation of
political officers who viewed British expansion in precisely the same
light. Men like Mountstuart Elphinstone, who had led the first British
embassy to Afghanistan in 1809, or John Malcolm, who led a similar
mission to Persia in 1810. To them, while the main purpose of expan-
sion was trading benefits, inevitably commercial expansion would
entail some form of political engagement and eventually control.
76 Huw J. Davies
Malcolm believed that ‘the only safe view that Britain can take of her
Empire in India is to consider it, as it really is, always in a state of dan-
ger’.53 In line with such thinking, political, economic and, by exten-
sion, military expansions were all inevitable, at least until the natural
frontier had been reached. Elphinstone had very clear views about the
limits of British India. In his view, Afghanistan should be made an
ally, which would mean that the British then ‘could turn the whole of
our attention and resources to the defence of the noble frontier by the
desert, the mountains, and the Indus’.54
Expansionism and aggrandizement, then, were not the sole dictates
of a few political officers but was part of the strategic culture of British
India at least until it suffered the reverse in Afghanistan in 1841, and
possibly as late as 1857. Indeed, Auckland himself advocated expan-
sion to the Indus – the so-called natural frontier – in response to a
suggestion by the Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Henry Fane, that
the British should view the Sutlej as the limits of British control. ‘In
the event of a formidable invasion by nations from the west under the
conduct and influence of European powers,’ Auckland argued, ‘when
all not for us, would be against us, we should hardly leave the fertile
plains of the Punjab [i.e. those between the Sutlej and the Indus] open
to an enemy for the collection of his means and forces.’ Rather ‘our
main strength would probably be upon the Indus, our advanced posts
beyond it.’55 Here, Auckland was evoking the much-feared threat of
Russian or Persian intervention to justify his point, but the main issue
was the need to deny key resources – the fertile Sutlej-Indus Doab – to
a potential enemy.
Combine this with a second strategic-cultural phenomenon, namely
the military garrison state identified by Douglas Peers, and it becomes
a little clearer as to how the British decided on war. As Peers argues,
the ‘British imagination in the nineteenth century situated India in
an atmosphere in which war was viewed as a constant. Violence was
considered to be deeply impregnated into Indian society’.56 Military
personnel, from both the East India Company Army and the Queen’s
Army, came to dominate the political decision-making process, and
the political officer cadre alike.57 Burnes, Wade and the majority of
their peers were all military officers seconded from the regiments
to the political service. The Commander-in-Chief was one of the prin-
cipal advisors to the Governor General.58 Military thought came to
dominate political decision-making.
That is not to say that the British Army in India wanted a war in
Afghanistan. Indeed, Sir Henry Fane was opposed to the eventual
decision to invade Afghanistan, and replace Dost Muhammed Khan
 Intelligence and strategic culture 77
with his predecessor Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. His secretary, Major Mar-
cus de la Poer Beresford, felt sure that he disapproved of it. ‘I have
examined this proposed policy of the Governor General,’ he wrote
in his journal on 3 July 1838, ‘and I neither think it wise nor just. It
is not wise because Shah Shuja cannot be so useful an ally as Dost
Muhammed, and will make for a more expensive one. It is not just for
the present ruler of Kabul has not committed any offence which merits
such punishment.’59 Yet, following a 10-page-long examination of the
evidence, which conclusively demonstrated the unwise nature of the
policy adopted by Auckland, Beresford makes a startling statement. ‘I
ought not to find fault with the Governor General’s policy,’ he wrote,
as ‘it opens to me the next view of service I have ever had.’ As a soldier,
Beresford wanted to go to war. ‘I have some hope of smelling powder,
burnt in earnest before I die’, he continues. ‘War is my garden . . . I am
but a soldier.’60
Beresford’s conflicted responses to the policy suggest the reality that
military personnel, particularly those serving in India in the nineteenth
century, were highly unlikely to be opposed to a war, which offered
prospects of earning military glory, and with it the prospect of pro-
motion and prize money.61 Beresford was never going to turn down
the opportunity for advancement or service. Does that mean that his
impassioned analysis of Auckland’s policy was little more than false
rage? It seems odd when he wrote it in a private journal. Instead, this
points to the wider strategic culture inherent within India at this time,
and within militaries generally. Individually, officers held views that
might run contrary to the aims and terms of their service, but this did
not, and does not, prohibit them from serving as part of a collective
unit. Beresford was at one and the same time expressing a moral view
that an invasion of Afghanistan was a terrible idea, a selfish view that
the invasion would nevertheless be good for his career, and a collec-
tive view that militaries are generally subordinate to the political view
and, moreover, that this was what an army was for. Despite significant
reservations among the very highest ranks of the army, then, the stra-
tegic culture – that is to say, the prevailing assumptions and behaviour
of the British in India as defined by their political, military, social and
cultural experiences, not just in India, but on a global scale – was
favourable towards war.
These two elements of strategic culture also influenced the final
aspect of Calcutta decision-making that needs attention; namely the
use and abuse of intelligence. C. A. Bayly has exhaustively examined
the pre-existing information networks that came to be used, with
varied levels of success, by the British in India.62 Inevitably, though,
78 Huw J. Davies
the British ‘mongrelized’ such networks to make them more familiar,
combining them with their own understanding of how information
should be gathered. The mongrelization of the intelligence networks
was mirrored elsewhere in military circles, and was inevitable for
a power that had recently emerged victorious in a war against a
European superpower – namely Napoleonic France. Britain’s success
there, capped by the battle at Waterloo on 18 June 1815, helped
define a strong sense of British identity. But where defeat foster’s
introspection and self-improvement, victory bred complacency and
arrogance. The mongrelization of intelligence in India was not the
incorporation of the effective elements of one intelligence network
with the effective practices of another, but the domination of one
proven successful elsewhere, with one proven successful but misun-
derstood in India.
Even officers who had spent their whole careers on the subconti-
nent tended to embrace European techniques for collecting, processing
and analyzing information. For instance, James Kirkpatrick, on learn-
ing that his Residency in Hyderabad would be reorganized in 1800,
expressed approval because the new situation was ‘in conformity to
the style in Europe’.63 Throughout the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Europeans with significant experience of intelligence gathering
and analysis in Europe attained high-ranking positions in India. Sir
Evan Napier was one of Whitehall’s most effective intelligence chiefs
during the Napoleonic Wars, before becoming Governor of Bombay
between 1812 and 1819.64 Lord William Bentinck, Auckland’s imme-
diate predecessor, was Governor of Sicily and a general with extensive
European experience before eventually becoming Governor General
of India from 1828 to 1835. Auckland himself had no experience of
India before arriving in 1836, but did have significant experience of
political and administrative processes at Whitehall.
In the absence of any organization whose sole responsibility was the
acquisition and analysis of intelligence in an as objective capacity as
possible, the task fell to those most capable of collecting the informa-
tion. In Europe, this manifested itself in the gradual expectation that
diplomats and ambassadors would be the conduit for intelligence col-
lection, and, by extension, analysis; decisions, though, would be taken
by statesmen based in Whitehall. With no other means available, and
with the apparent success of such an ad hoc organization in Europe,
this system was transferred to India by default. In Europe, the sys-
tem worked because the prosecution of foreign policy could be closely
regulated.65 In India, where no such safeguards existed, the system
catalyzed spiralling imperial expansionism. Whereas only looking for
 Intelligence and strategic culture 79
‘good news’ was a common problem in Europe, the opposite was true
in India, where only listening to ‘bad news’ was de rigueur.
This explains how the Russian threat became an increasingly serious
problem between 1836 and 1837. With no balance to the information
he was receiving, Auckland could only identify what Martin Bayly has
suggested was a ‘culturally-contingent understanding of how the weak
Afghan polity would fall prey to outside influences’.66 After Burnes
had arrived in Kabul, for example, Auckland began to worry that he
could ‘hardly hope that Dost Muhammed will be satisfied with any-
thing that would not be offensive to Ranjit Singh; and yet he ought
to be satisfied that he is allowed to remain at peace and is saved from
actual invasion’. Dost Muhammed was, according to Auckland, ‘rest-
less and intriguing and will be as difficult to keep quiet, as are the
other Afghans and Sikhs, Heratees, Russians and Persians. It is a fine
imbroglio of embassy and intrigue,’ he wrote to Hobhouse, the Presi-
dent of the Board of Control, ‘with more bluster than of real strength
anywhere. Yet it is impossible not to feel that the East and the West are
careering insensibly nearer each other.’67
Auckland had embarked on a lengthy tour of northern India and
established his headquarters in Simla for the summer of 1838, just as
he was required to make the critical decision on British policy towards
Afghanistan. Isolated in his hill station retreat, and with individuals
who, as the products of the East India Company’s Political Service,
were self-interested, glory-seekers, Auckland lacked a competent and
balanced intelligence analysis apparatus. He was forced to analyze
contradictory intelligence and make decisions based upon it. He deter-
mined on a strategy: bolstering the Anglo-Sikh alliance to maintain a
precarious balance of power on the North-West Frontier. When Dost
Muhammed threatened that, Auckland began to view Afghanistan as
the problem rather than a solution. Dost Muhammed had, of course,
a legitimate grievance with the Sikhs – the sovereignty of Peshawar
remained an open, festering wound. Dost Muhammed had wanted to
obtain British support in regaining the former Afghan summer capital.
Burnes, in seeing an opportunity to outflank a Russian envoy, and
secure an Afghan alliance, immediately agreed to what was nothing
more than negotiations.68 But Auckland disapproved, and rescinded
Burnes’s authority.
Effectively, Auckland felt he was being manipulated, and that was
intolerable. British indirect rule thrived by ensuring quasi-independ-
ent powers bent to British will. If they did not, then punitive action
became necessary. This was not unusual but had been an established
tenet of indirect rule for more than half a century. Backing down
80 Huw J. Davies
would look weak, and would also betray Britain’s primary ally, Ran-
jit Singh. Dost Muhammed’s attempts to bolster his authority within
Afghanistan might, if successful, similarly threaten the Sikh position,
and create a disturbingly powerful Islamic state opposed to British
interests. If he failed, Dost Muhammed’s authority might collapse
completely, and leave an unstable and fractured state on British India’s
North-West Frontier, an attractive prospect for Persia and Russia to
extend their own influence. At the same time, disconcerting reports
were coming in that low-key rebellions were occurring across India,
perhaps prompted by Dost Muhammed’s attack on Jamrud, and Per-
sia’s unpunished attack on Herat.69 At this point, whether suggestive
of failure or success, any intelligence on Dost Muhammed Khan’s
policies in Afghanistan would be interpreted in a negative light. The
situation called for an immediate and decisive exertion of British mili-
tary authority. Better to remove the cause of the problem completely –
Dost Muhammed himself – and impose a new government capable
of asserting widespread authority, friendly to Sikh power, and of act-
ing in Britain’s interests. Such a policy played straight into the policy
pursued in London. Palmerston wanted to stymie Russian advances
in Central Asia, and military action would prove as effective, if not
more effective, than mere commercial competition. If Britain imposed
a puppet ruler in Kabul, then Russian influence would be frozen out of
Afghanistan indefinitely, and that is precisely what the Russians per-
ceived to have happened when the British entered Kabul unopposed
in August 1839.70
In conclusion, then, this article has sought to reframe the conven-
tional analysis of the origins of the First Anglo-Afghan War. In explain-
ing the series of events that led to the outbreak of war, historians have
attempted to unravel ‘this maze of intrigues’, as Mountstuart Elphin-
stone termed it.71 In doing so, the wider strategic cultural context is
often overlooked. The motives for war were very different in London,
Lahore and Calcutta. In London, the decision to support an inter-
vention in Afghanistan was linked more to the need to maintain the
European balance of power, contain Russian expansionism and retain
strategic leverage in the form of maritime supremacy. How this was
achieved was less relevant than the objective itself: Russia would be
excluded by either commercial or military supremacy. In Lahore, the
route to conflict lay in the balance of power that the Company sought
to establish and maintain on the North-West Frontier. In attempting
to bolster his authority in Kabul and Afghanistan, Dost Muhammed
threatened this balance of power. Strong-arm tactics and attempts to
recover Peshawar from the Sikhs rekindled unpleasant memories of
 Intelligence and strategic culture 81
Afghan excesses at the end of the last century. Moreover, policymakers
in Calcutta were just as concerned about Dost Muhammed’s weak-
nesses as his potential strength. Pressed into an irresolvable situation
with the Sikhs vis-a-vis Peshawar, Dost Muhammed might turn to Rus-
sia or Persia for support. On the one hand, then, Dost Muhammed’s
strengths might lead to a dominant and belligerent power on the fron-
tier of British India, while on the other, his weaknesses might invite
interest from Britain’s European enemies. It became easier to depose
him than pursue alternatives that attempted to suit all parties, and
as a result of three completely different scenarios, the British were
persuaded to invade Afghanistan. The wider strategic cultural context
helps to explain this admittedly bizarre policy decision. The first Brit-
ish invasion of Afghanistan took place within a context that viewed
war in South Asia as a constant. Commercial and political expansion
inevitably led to military conflict, and this would continue until Brit-
ain established a ‘natural frontier’, suggested by Elphinstone to be the
river Indus. Moreover, to the average officer and soldier in the East
India Company Army, or in the Queen’s Army, the prospect of war,
and the potential glory and financial reward this entailed, proved col-
lectively enticing, even if individuals were able harshly to criticize the
policy decision. Such a culture perpetuated war rather than allowed
military advisers to ask searching questions of the moral legitimacy
of the conflict. All of this took place within a wider political con-
text of expansionism, which saw civil servants and military officers
manipulate intelligence and policy advice to their own ends within a
framework of indirect rule. Finally, the mongrelization of intelligence
apparatus in India prevented systematic unbiased intelligence analysis
from taking place and promoted a culture of cognitive dissonance.
The invasion of Afghanistan had a rational strategic decision-making
process behind it, but one that was corrupted by a long-term strategic
culture that perpetuated war.

Notes
1 Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT MS vol. 89, Conway Papers,
Conway to his brother, Anstain, 22 August 1744.
2 See, for example, among others, William Dalrymple, Return of a King:
The First Battle for Afghanistan (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). An excel-
lent exception is Robert Johnson, The Afghan Way of War: Culture and
Pragmatism, a Critical History (London: Hurst, 2011).
3 See, for example, Malcolm Yapp, Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran
and Afghanistan, 1798–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Edward
Ingram, The Beginning of the Great Game in Asia (Oxford: Clarendon
82 Huw J. Davies
Press, 1973); Robert Johnson, Spying for Empire: The Great Game in
Central and South-East Asia, 1757–1947 (London: Greenhill, 2006); and
P. Hopkirk, The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (Oxford:
John Murray, 1990). The most convincing exception to this trend is Benja-
min D. Hopkins, The Making of Modern Afghanistan (London: Palgrave,
2008).
4 George de Lacy Evans, On the Designs of Russia (London: John Murray,
1828), pp. 115–18. See for more detail on De Lacy Evans, Edward M. Spi-
ers, Radical General: Sir George de Lacy Evans, 1787–1870 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 28–39.
5 The London Times, 11 September 1829.
6 For more on this see Huw J. Davies, Wellington’s Wars: The Making of a
Military Genius (London: Yale University Press, 2012); and Joshua Moon,
Wellington’s Two-Front War: The Peninsular Campaigns at Home and
Abroad, 1808–1814 (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2011).
7 For more on British intelligence networks in the Napoleonic Wars, see
Huw J. Davies, ‘Diplomats as Spymasters: A Case Study of the Peninsu-
lar War’, The Journal of Military History, vol. 76, no. 1 (January 2012),
pp. 37–68; and ibid., ‘Integration of Strategic and Operational Intelligence
During the Peninsular War’, Intelligence and National Security, vol. 21,
no. 2 (April 2006), pp. 202–23.
8 See also J. R. Ferris, ‘Tradition and System: British Intelligence and the Old
World Order, 1715–1956’, in G. Kennedy (ed.), Imperial Defence: The
Old World Order, 1856–1956 (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 178–81.
9 K. Hamilton and R. Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolu-
tion, Theory and Administration (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 61. See
also Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intel-
ligence Community (London: Heinemann, 1986).
10 Duke University Rubenstein Library, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
(DURL) Backhouse Papers 9/1, Hudson’s Report on Circassia, 19 Decem-
ber 1835.
11 The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, London (TNA)
FO64/233, Durham to Palmerston, St Petersburg, 13 February 1837.
12 TNA FO64/233, Durham to Palmerston, St Petersburg, 14 January 1837.
13 TNA FO64/234, Durham to Palmerston, St Petersburg, 8 April 1837.
14 Ibid., Durham to Palmerston, St Petersburg, 13 March 1837.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., Durham to Palmerston, St Petersburg, 8 April 1837.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 TNA FO64/231, Palmerston to Durham, Foreign Office, 16 January 1837.
20 TNA FO64/233, Durham to Palmerston, St. Petersburg, 24 February 1837.
21 Ibid., Durham to Palmerston, St. Petersburg, 28 February 1837.
22 British Library (BL) Asia, Pacific and Africa Collection (APAC) Mss Eur
F213/68, McNeil to Auckland, Tehran, 5 March 1838.
23 TNA FO64/234, Durham to Palmerston, St. Petersburg, 25 May 1837.
24 Ibid.
25 DURL Backhouse Papers 8/3, Palmerston to Ponsonby, Foreign Office, 22
August 1834.
 Intelligence and strategic culture 83
26 See Hopkins, Modern Afghanistan, pp. 70–5; and Kaushik Roy, War, Cul-
ture and Society in Early Modern South Asia, 1740–1849 (London: Rout-
ledge, 2013), pp. 140–50.
27 Bikrama Jit Hasrat, Anglo-Sikh Relations, 1799–1849: A Reappraisal of
the Rise and Fall of the Sikhs (New Delhi: V.V. Research Institute, 1968),
pp. 150–1.
28 See Jean-Marie LaFont, Fauj-i-Khas: Maharaja Ranjit Singh and His
French Officers (New Delhi: Guru Nanak Dev University, 2002).
29 BL Add MS 37691, f. 1–2, Colvin-Wade, Calcutta, 28 May 1837.
30 See ibid., ff. 40–45, Auckland-Loch, Calcutta, 11 July 1837. See also
Yapp, Strategies of British India, p. 230.
31 National Archives of India, New Delhi, India (NAI) Political Depart-
ment (PD)37/1/46, Extract of Intelligence from Masson, Kabul, 5 Decem-
ber 1836, forwarded by Wade to Macnaghten, Ludhiana, 13 May 1837.
32 Ibid.
33 Yapp, Strategies of British India, pp. 226–7.
34 Punjab Archives, Lahore, Pakistan (PAL) 119/24 ff.197–9, Macnaghten to
Wade, Fort William, 5 June 1837.
35 PAL 119/4 ff. 29–32, Macnaghten to Wade, Fort William, 9 January 1837.
36 The Qizilbash were ethnic Persians whom Timur Shah had employed as
his personal bodyguard.
37 PAL 119/22 ff. 160–180, McNeill to Macnaghten, Tehran, 22 January 1837.
38 PAL 119/55 ff. 472, Auckland to Ranjit Singh, Fort William, 11 Septem-
ber 1837.
39 John William Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir
John Malcolm, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1856), Malcolm to Ross,
10 August 1799, i, p. 90. See also R. Wellesley (First Marquess), The Dis-
patches, Minutes, and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley, K.G.,
During His Administration in India, 5 vols. (London: John Murray, 1836–
7), Mornington to Duncan, Fort St. George, 5 August 1799, ii, pp. 110–1.
40 NAI SC37/1/10 Wade to MacNaghten, Ludhiana, 23 May 1837.
41 BL Add MS 37691 ff. 12–14, Auckland to McNeill, Calcutta, 10 June
1837.
42 Ibid., ff. 5–6, Auckland to Fane, Barrackpore, 3 June 1837.
43 Ibid., ff. 5–6, Auckland to Fane, Barrackpore, 3 June 1837.
44 Ibid., ff. 12–14, Auckland to McNeill, Calcutta, 10 June 1837.
45 See, for example, Hopkirk’s Great Game, for a particularly romantic
retelling of the story, where Macnaghten is portrayed as scheming and
double-dealing, and Burnes as incompetent. More recently William Dal-
rymple has portrayed Macnaghten and Burnes (and the British in general)
as borderline pantomime villains. See Dalrymple, Return of a King.
46 Martin J. Bayly, ‘Imagining Afghanistan: British Foreign Policy and the
Afghan Polity, 1808–1878’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, King’s College
London, 2013.
47 Instructions were repeatedly issued to Burnes to keep Tehran and London
informed of any intelligence specifically related to Russian interest. For
example, in late September 1837, Macnaghten mentioned that ‘Captain
Burnes will doubtless keep the British minister at Tehran acquainted with
all the information he may obtain on the subject of Persian and Russian
84 Huw J. Davies
intrigues’. PAL 119/59 ff. 499–500, Macnaghten to Wade, Fort William,
25 September 1837.
48 See Hopkins, Modern Afghanistan, p. 52.
49 BL Add Mss 37689, Auckland to Stanley Clark, Barrackpore, 2 April 1836.
50 BL APAC L/P&S/5/126 Memorandum of Instructions for Burnes’s mission
to Afghanistan, Fort William, 29 September 1836.
51 Yapp, Strategies of British India, p. 10.
52 Residents were political officers assigned permanently as British liaison
to the court of a native power. Michael H. Fisher, Indirect Rule in India:
Residents and the Residency System, 1764–1858 (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1991).
53 John Malcolm, A Political History of India from 1784 to 1823 (London,
1824), ii, p. 76. Cited in Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon:
Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early Nineteenth-century India
(London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), pp. 44–5.
54 T. E. Colebrooke, Life of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone (Lon-
don: John Murray, 1884), i, p. 229.
55 BL Add MS 37691 ff. 16–18, Auckland to Fane, Calcutta, 14 June 1837.
56 Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, p. 2.
57 Fisher, Indirect Rule, p. 75.
58 Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, pp. 35–6.
59 BL APAC Mss Eur C70, ff. 348–58, Journal of Marcus de la Poer Beres-
ford, Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief.
60 Ibid.
61 Davies, Wellington’s Wars, pp. 65–78.
62 C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social
Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997).
63 BL APAC Mss Eur F228/12, James Kirkpatrick-William Kirkpatrick,
Hyderabad, 28 April 1800
64 For more on the intelligence gathering activities of Sir Evan Nepean, see
Roger Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory,
1793–1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2013).
65 Ferris, ‘Tradition and System’, pp. 178–81.
66 Bayly, ‘Imagining Afghanistan’, p. 35.
67 BL APAC Mss Eur F213/9, Auckland to Hobhouse, Carnpore, 6 January
1838.
68 BL APAC Mss Eur C70, ff. 348–58, Beresford Journal.
69 BL Add MSS 38473, Skinner to Auckland, 2 June 1838.
70 See Alexander Morrison, ‘Twin Imperial Disasters: The Invasions of Khiva
and Afghanistan in the Russian and British Official Mind, 1839–1842’,
forthcoming in Modern Asian Studies. (I am grateful to Dr Morrison for
providing me with the proofs of this forthcoming article.)
71 BL APAC Mss Eur F88/362, f. 102a.
4 ‘At Ease, Soldier’
Social life in the cantonment
Erica Wald

Of all the ills flesh is heir to, there is nothing I dread worse than ennui;
it is the pest of a soldier’s life, especially in India. From it there is no
escaping. . . . Soldiers cannot lounge on a sofa and yawn over the
pages of a Review, or the columns of a Morning Paper, nor can they
fret their life out if the eggs are over or under done.1
—Peashawur. 1853

The evident boredom of the grenadier who wrote this lament to his
diary in 1853 might seem surprising given that the 1840s and 1850s
were a particularly unsettled period for British rule in India. Wars with
the Sikhs and Burmese, as well as smaller-scale ‘pacification’ cam-
paigns, occupied Crown and Company troops. The European rank-
and-file, as the ‘thin white line’ of colonial control, was thought to
be integral to rule in India, not just in times of unrest, but as a visible
reminder of European might. However, even at a juncture such as this,
in practice the men spent relatively little time actively ‘soldiering’. On
average, a European soldier in India had nine hours of drill per week
and, barring periods of active service and a few hours here and there
of guard duty, little else that they were required to do in a day (except
to keep out of the sun).
It was the far more numerous sepoys, the Indian troops under the
employ of European forces, who composed the majority of the Com-
pany and Crown troops in India. For most of the period until the
mid-nineteenth century, sepoys outnumbered European troops by a
ratio of eight to one.2 The British relied on these Indian soldiers for
the vast majority of regular, active duties. European troops cost much
more, not just to recruit and train, but also to maintain, in India.
A large measure of this cost came from the men’s higher susceptibility
to disease. In 1781 General Stubbert explained to Warren Hastings
86 Erica Wald
that even in the most healthy seasons, an eighth of the European force
was rendered unfit for service due to illness.3 However, despite this
and their much smaller numbers, European troops played a critically
important psychological role for the Company, seen as a sort of racial
backbone for the army.
Yet, the men themselves complicated this narrative; while believed
to be essential to the maintenance of imperial rule, they were equally
seen to be volatile and potentially dangerous. The men were held in
very low esteem not just by their commanding officers but also by
Company administrators more broadly. Both Company and Crown
saw them as little more than degraded louts whose ‘needs’ consisted
of a (loosely defined) diet of food, sex and a place to sleep in order
to perform their soldierly duties. As such, they were seen as a costly
but volatile asset that needed to be protected and carefully managed.
This understanding is clearly visible in the ways in which the internal
economies of cantonments were controlled and regulated and, more
specifically, in the social activities provided for the men.
Soldiers were furnished with few entertainments – the only regularly
supported recreations involved more salacious activities: regulated sex
and drink. Lal Bazaars, the area of the cantonment where regulated
prostitutes lived and worked, were established from the 1780s. The
canteen system, introduced from the early 1820s, rationalized the
distribution of spirits to soldiers. The canteen system also provided
a much-needed space within the cantonment where the men could
gather and socialize. However, the support for these activities resulted
in a number of unwanted consequences for the army.4 Hospital admis-
sions for venereal disease and alcohol-related problems attest to the
fact that the canteen and brothel remained popular activities for the
men throughout the nineteenth century.
Despite the men’s frequent complaints about the lack of things to
do, it was only when boredom came to be seen as a serious fiscal
and logistical liability that any change took place within cantonments.
A number of surgeons anxiously pointed to the consequences of this
widespread ennui, citing as evidence mutinous and violent behaviour
as well as the high levels of hospital admissions. This led some com-
manding officers and surgeons to suggest that the men be encouraged
to engage in healthier alternatives such as ‘manly sports and recrea-
tions’.5 In a piecemeal fashion, alternative amusements began to mate-
rialize in cantonments across India throughout the nineteenth century.
Coffee shops were situated next to the canteens and offered the men
a place separate from the canteen or barracks to gather. Sports and
activities which were seen to be more morally acceptable and uplifting
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 87
like cricket, reading, theatrical societies, regimental bands, gardening
and temperance societies appeared in some stations. Regimental sav-
ing banks and schools opened later in the century with the hopes that
both would promote good behaviour among the men.
However, these healthier, more virtuous options were limited in
scope and very few were officially, universally encouraged. Similar
to the disparate and fractured nature of Company governance more
generally, soldierly pastimes were unevenly supported. Variations
existed not just across the three Presidencies (and their respective
armies) of Bengal, Bombay and Madras, but within each of these
and, until 1858, between Company and Crown. In reality, support
for a particular activity, even if endorsed by the Governor General,
was dependent on the whim of the commanding officer. Each officer
held his own ideas about the ideal composition of the soldier and it
was he who bore the greatest influence over the everyday lives of the
rank-and-file. The bureaucratic structures and missives of the colonial
state did not always completely penetrate cantonment boundaries.
For the individual soldier, colonial governance remained personal,
with decisions ‘from above’ selectively adhered to, or ignored, by
their officers.
The men’s background, or rather the perception of this, remained
critical in shaping the kinds of activities that the men were permitted
or encouraged to engage in during their many free hours. However,
the army actively manipulated this, bearing very clear ideas about
what was needed in order to rule India. This chapter suggests that
the Company and Crown’s unwillingness to provide for the men’s
social or intellectual wants was not simply a reflection of a particular
imparted understanding of the composition of the European soldier.
Instead, it shows that the conception, or understanding, of the rank-
and-file was itself deliberately shaped and manipulated. In this vision,
the soldier was a combination of brute strength, an almost animalistic
sexual drive, and very little in the way of brains. This notion would
change over the course of the century – though not as dramatically
as one might expect. By the time of Cardwell Reforms of 1870–71,
a more definitive shift had taken place. As Edward Spiers has noted,
Cardwell’s reforms established the framework within which the army
operated until the end of the century.6 The reforms themselves fol-
lowed numerous earlier changes to the structure of the army – from
adjusting the length of service (enacted during the Anglo-Sikh Wars
as a measure to reinforce troop strength) to altering recruiting tactics,
pay and conditions of service. These earlier bursts of reform activity
were piecemeal, rather than revolutionary. With each, however, came
88 Erica Wald
attempts to address the men’s ‘moral’ and social needs in what was
considered a more respectable fashion.
Exploring the activities that were officially encouraged or sanc-
tioned helps us understand how the army conceptualized the ideal sol-
dier. What did this man look like; what purpose was he meant to serve
in India and when did he become more reflective of the ‘nation’? This
chapter examines the leisure activities open to the men in this period of
time in order to form a more complete picture of the everyday lives of
soldiers in India during the nineteenth century and, more critically, to
assess how these reflected the army’s conception of the soldierly ideal.

Recruits and the ideal soldier

While the imbalance between sepoy and European troop strength
remained a constant, with the spread of its power the Company
recruited greater numbers of European soldiers to serve in India.
Despite the perceived importance of these men for ‘holding’ India,
army and government officials (themselves drawn primarily from
the upper- and upper-middle classes), held firm stereotypes about the
‘degraded’ class of men from which the European soldier was drawn.
This understanding placed the men at the very bottom of an imagined,
moral hierarchy. Indeed, as late as the twentieth century, the recruits
of the eighteenth century were looked back upon as the ‘scum’ of the
nation, a rowdy assortment of reprobates, drunkards and pickpockets
thrown together with the labouring poor who completed their ranks.7
For much of the century, recruits to both Crown and Company
armies had an average age of between 15 and 19 years and earned
a daily wage of about one shilling.8 With this wage, it seems unlikely
that many men, save those from the lower and working classes, would
find army service terribly attractive. Until the mid-nineteenth century,
Crown recruits had low levels of literacy and an even greater number
were in poor physical condition even before their arrival in India.9
Moreover, the recruiting process itself was heavily reliant on the use
of alcohol and, accordingly, drew men already fond of drink. While
no recruit could be officially attested until 24 hours had passed since
his enlistment (ostensibly to prevent rash, ill-chosen and drunken
choices), recruiting sergeants often skirted this requirement by keep-
ing the men in a constant state of intoxication until the 24 hours had
passed.10 Following Cardwell’s reforms, the targeted age of enlistment
increased. Even then, the system was far from fool-proof and India-
bound recruits remained young and often immature. An 1896 article
confirmed that although the army now stipulated that boys must be
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 89
above the age of 20 to be sent to India, a sizeable number slipped
through this net by inflating their age on enlistment papers.11
There were some significant variations between Company and
Crown troops. British and Irish working class labourers composed
the majority of both armies. However, as Peter Stanley has pointed
out, the Company attracted a slightly higher calibre of man and there
was a certain degree of respectability associated with service in their
forces.12 The letters of Mauger Fitzhugh Monk, a native of Guernsey
who enlisted under an assumed name following a financial scandal in
England, confirmed this when he assured his father that ‘the number
of men of good family & education in the barracks here under vari-
ous circumstances is really astonishing’.13 In a later letter to his sister,
Monk promised her that ‘in all but name the Company of Artillery
are gentlemen, we have our own cooks, messengers and servants. Eve-
rything you can possibly want is brought to you in barracks and the
only thing required of you is to keep yourself clean . . . sober and prove
yourself smart at the guns’.14 This account points to a number of reali-
ties for the European soldier in India. While no doubt Monk’s letter
reflected a degree of the Company man’s assumed superiority over his
Crown counterpart, it was certainly true that the Company ranker
could expect to encounter better-educated peers – at least in compari-
son to the average Crown soldier. Moreover, Monk’s sentiment echoes
that of the grenadier in that both men highlight the lack of responsi-
bilities that would otherwise occupy their days. Monk adds a more
positive slant, suggesting the free time that this opened up made his
lifestyle in India closer to that of a gentleman and would allow him
to instead undertake activities aimed at professional advancement.
Monk’s family background meant that his sense of expectation and
entitlement was much higher than the average ranker. The majority of
those aspiring to a higher station would find themselves disappointed;
there was very little chance of promotion from the ranks. Despite
assurances from Monk and other ‘gentlemen’ soldiers of the higher
class of men serving in India, in the vision of the officers and adminis-
trators who made vast pronouncements on the soldiery, this viewpoint
was largely disregarded.
The army’s administration was not overly concerned with the men’s
tender age or with the lack of ‘refinement’ among its ordinary Euro-
pean soldiers. Not only were both Crown and Company unwilling to
offer greater pay to attract a higher calibre of soldiers, but for most
of the nineteenth century they resisted all pressure to invest in the
men’s education. Too much refinement was explicitly deemed to be
undesirable among ordinary soldiers. The Duke of Wellington, Arthur
90 Erica Wald
Wellesley, was distinctly uninterested in promoting education for the
working classes.15 Wellesley’s conception of the soldier – the brain-
less brawn – was also used to justify his support for corporal punish-
ment in the army, thinking this the only way to control such a mass of
men. Regimental schools in limited stations were introduced only just
before the public education movement in England achieved a number
of successes in the 1870s and 1880s.16 In common with other ‘non-
essential’ activities, regimental schools did not operate with the same
degree of regularity as, for example, the canteen. Schools were sub-
ordinated to a host of other daily activities. They were also stratified
by class: while the children of officers could expect to learn ‘classical
subjects’, including Latin, at purpose-built schools in the hill stations,
the curriculum for soldiers was more basic: arithmetic, writing and
dictation, and these were infused with martial undertones.
Discussions and debates on the ‘improvement’ of the soldiery –
moral, intellectual and physical – began in the late 1810s. Officers
and surgeons supporting a proposed moral uplift often linked it with
the health of the men, suggesting this as a more ‘cost effective’ way
of countering the rising costs of the army medical establishment. An
anonymous medical writer (calling himself ‘A King’s Officer’) wrote
his recommendations for such improvement in 1825. Reading, ‘pri-
vate theatricals’ and savings banks were to be encouraged, as should a
form of competitive gardening, whereby prizes would be awarded to
those men found to be ‘the most diligent and successful horticultural-
ists’.17 Such proposals ran counter to those of the ‘Wellesley school’.
The latter stood opposed to ‘refinement’ and remained in support of
controlling the men by force. Wellesley’s views were often framed in
opposition to those of liberal statesmen such as Richard Cobden and
John Bright. However, for the rank and file in India, these distinctions
were not so clear, with one politicized grenadier taking aim at both,
commenting angrily on what he saw as ‘military murders’ (the contin-
uation of corporal and capital punishment in the army) before moving
to a direct attack on Cobden’s comments on the ‘pampered’ soldiery.18
Administrators and parliamentarians were often keen to point out that
the European soldier serving in India was provided with a number of
‘comforts’ that his counterpart serving in Europe did not have. Indian
servants within and without the cantonment provided everyday and
military-specific services including laundry, saddle cleaning and por-
terage. Moreover, they argued, careful attention was paid to the men’s
diet (and liquor rations). In the view of these parliamentarians, this
amounted to nothing less than pampering – and the men were ungrate-
ful and quite possibly spoiled by such treatment.
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 91
The European soldier was essential to the imperial project, but at
the same time was disconnected from the growing conception of the
nation.19 Seen as an instrument, rather than a citizen, generals like
Wellesley and debating parliamentarians could continue to dismiss
any ‘superfluous’ demands made for or by the men to allay their
boredom or increase their comforts. Debates and discussions about
the European soldier framed him as a low-class, degraded ruffian,
or, as the politicized grenadier noted, as ‘the lowest class of animals,
and only fit to be ruled with the Cat O’ nine tails’.20 The Company’s
responses to the pleas and suggestions that a number of surgeons
made to attend to the intellectual needs of the soldiery are revealing;
a pattern of employing the least expensive means of doing so quickly
emerges. What was sought was very much an army ‘on the cheap’.
The Company was not particularly interested in expending already
stretched resources to provide ‘healthier’ alternatives for the men. By
characterizing the men as mindless mercenaries, both Company and
Crown justified their decision to spend as little as possible on the
men’s upkeep.
The army’s assessment of the men’s mental capacities was linked
to pronouncements on their sexual proclivities. The European army
in India was made up of bachelors. Disconnected from family and
the refining impulses that this increasingly implied, it became easier
to portray the men as an undifferentiated mass, void of any value
or order except for the discipline that the army infused in them. The
men’s supposed animalistic need for sex was another element that sup-
ported this notion. Instead of discouraging such ‘dangerous’ propensi-
ties, or allowing the men to marry, the army did the reverse. Regulated
brothels sprung up across India in the 1780s, and managed canteens
(complete with a monopoly on the sale of liquor and intoxicants) were
introduced in most cantonments from the 1820s. With canteens open-
ing early in the morning and no other place to go, it is hardly a surprise
that drinking and alcoholism were ever-present in European stations.
The 1847 diary entry of the aforementioned grenadier recounted an
imagined dialogue between himself and a peer, trying to draw him into
the canteen:

Often I have said to myself ‘I won’t drink anymore,’ for I’m sure
it’s much better to keep sober, but no one who has not experienced
it can know the difficulty of keeping such a resolution. First one
will come and say ‘come on, aren’t you coming to the canteen,
I have been looking for you this 10 minutes. ‘I would reply often
‘I would rather not go to the canteen tonight, I am going to begin
92 Erica Wald
a reformation, for drinking does not suit my fancy and I would
rather not go down tonight.’
‘What, not go!’ he would say astonished.21

The grenadier’s observations suggest some of the ways by which the

army attempted to mould the men into a ‘soldierly’ form (perhaps too
unruly to be called an ‘ideal’), encouraging them to partake in activi-
ties deemed appropriate for their class. The assumption that supported
the introduction of both brothel and canteen was that each would
protect the men’s health – either by the provision of non-diseased pros-
titutes or unadulterated liquor and spirits. Alternative, perhaps more
‘wholesome’ recreations for the men were introduced in later years.
Bundled with the regimental canteen came the coffee shop, library and
regimental savings banks.
On the surface, the introduction of these latter spaces appears
uncomplicated and innocuous enough. However, each was the focus
of debates within both the Military Board and the government. These
centred round ideological differences as well as more prosaic matters
of cost and the practicalities of space. Any investment in the men’s
‘betterment’, whether it was moral, intellectual, or physical, was sub-
jected to a careful cost–benefit analysis. Just as the cost of introducing
a better quality of beer to the canteen would be weighed against the
number of men taken ill after ‘wandering’ in search of arrack, so too
was the cost of stocking a soldier’s library assessed against measures
like the levels of punishment in a regiment.

Regulated entertainments: the reforms of the 1820s

In the early 1820s regulated canteens, coffee shops and reading rooms
were introduced in some of the larger cantonments where European
troops were stationed. While most, if not all, stations supported
a thriving canteen, the number of the latter institutions was much
smaller. The introduction of such ‘novelties’ depended very much on
the whim of a particular commanding officer and many old India
hands believed that while alcohol was essential to soldiering in India,
reading and education was, at the very least, threatening to good dis-
cipline and, at worst, emasculating. Soldiers themselves were keenly
aware of the dearth of diversions available to them, with one not-
ing that there were no other places of ‘amusement’ in the canton-
ment other than the canteen and while it was not ‘compulsory’ to go,
very few men had the resolution to avoid it and were certainly never
encouraged to do so.22
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 93
Regimental clergymen and missionaries offered a direct, though not
particularly forceful, challenge to the centrality of the canteen with the
introduction of temperance societies. These groups required members
to take a pledge, whereby they would promise to abstain from drink
and contribute the money they would have spent on this ‘vice’ to social
or religious causes. The societies’ success in curbing intemperance var-
ied. Often, as was the case with the men of the 18th Regiment in
Bengal, levels of temperance and ‘virtue’ were inconsistent over time.
In this regiment, a number of men signed a temperance pledge while
in Fort William but, on learning that they were to be despatched to
Burma, begged the clergyman who had administered the pledge to be
relieved from it. This plea was made on the grounds that they felt
they would not be able to tolerate the climate of Burma without the
assistance of liquor.23 In 1839 Henry Piddington, a Captain in the East
India Company most famous for his meteorological observations,
wrote an impassioned plea in support of coffee as a weapon in the
fight against alcohol. Piddington noted that the temperance societies
were rarely successful in ‘tempering the men’s passion for spirituous
liquors,’ and would do better were they abstinence societies.24 Tem-
perance societies within cantonments were ordered abolished by the
government in 1845, on the grounds that clubs and societies were not
permitted within the army and their presence violated this rule. The
societies remained in towns (and their strength grew markedly again
in the latter part of the century) but, from 1845, they could no longer
be as close to the soldiery as they might have hoped. No material
remains that could outline the reasons behind this decision. However,
concurrent debates suggest that the army was not interested in wholly
stopping the men from drinking. Again, in the eyes of many com-
manding officers, temperance societies’ attempts to reform and uplift
the soldiery threatened to undermine the men’s brute strength.
Regimental clergymen were also early supporters of the reading
rooms and libraries that the Company opened across the presidencies
from 1819. It is clear that their defenders sought to introduce a higher
morality to the men’s daily routine. This is reflected in the books per-
mitted, as well as in the initial orders, which stated that the books
could be read only under the supervision of a librarian – initially des-
ignated as the regimental chaplain.25 Perhaps unsurprisingly, given
the higher rates of literacy among its troops, the Company opened
more libraries for its men than did the Crown; it sanctioned three large
and four small libraries across Bombay, with similar numbers in Ben-
gal and Madras. While it might appear paradoxical, in Bombay, the
introduction of libraries was linked directly to the introduction of the
94 Erica Wald
canteen system. As suggested earlier, it was thought that both would
lessen the ‘licentious propensities often induced by mere idleness and
want of something to occupy [the men’s] attention’.26 In common with
approaches to the men’s sexual activities and drinking, the military
and government believed that control and regulation was the cure for
all that ailed the army.27
Following internal debates within military boards and the Court
of Directors in London, the books permitted were carefully chosen.
Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly, for example, was initially proposed by the
Bombay Military Board, but was struck down as inappropriate by the
Court.28 The approved list contained a number of religious works, to
which were added ‘classics’ like Paradise Lost, a scattering of works
on natural history, poetry and an even smaller number of Hindustani
and Persian grammars. Adventure and military fiction, such as Rob-
inson Crusoe and Narrative of a Soldier in the 7th Regiment shared
shelf space and were popular choices for both the military boards and
the men themselves.29 The rooms were not open to all comers, though.
Subscriptions were required and the ‘privilege’ of using them came at
the price of 4 annas (16 annas =1 rupee) a month.30
The rooms appear to have been used more as the century progressed,
perhaps due to a loosening of regulations which allowed the men to
take their one permitted book back to their barracks instead of being
forced to read only in the room itself. By the late 1860s, libraries fea-
tured a broader assortment of newspapers and popular books. Illus-
trated papers, like the Graphic and the Illustrated London News, were
as popular in India as they were in Britain, providing the men with
an additional means of connecting to ‘home’ when their other means
of doing so were limited. At some stations, the library also housed a
number of other ‘entertainments’ for the men, with carefully selected
games, like billiards and bagatelle, on offer. By the 1860s, one private’s
diary reveals that during his evenings at the library, he not only read
literature such as Shakespeare’s plays and Eton School Days, but also
regularly looked at the illustrated papers from London, and played
dominoes.31 For Private Wisewould (originally from east London), the
library also connected him with another popular soldierly pastime –
recollecting the entertainments of ‘home’ – more specifically, the Lon-
don music halls and theatres. He was able to use his regimental library
to read the plays of Shakespeare that he had seen performed earlier at
the Britannia.32 Wisewould spent many evenings with a fellow soldier
recounting nights spent at the Britannia, a theatre in Hoxton.
Private Wisewould’s diary entry also recorded that his command-
ing officer had permitted the construction of a theatre for the men.
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 95
In December 1870, he bluntly recorded that ‘Private Duckworth shot
himself today. . . . The Pantomime of Beauty and the Beast commenced
on Tuesday’.33 Wisewould and his friends in the regiment were later
able to attend not just the pantomime at Christmas, but music hall
performances staged by the men. In addition, they attended a popular
minstrel show, put on by Dave Carson, an American blackface min-
strel, who toured India in the 1860s.34 Carson’s tour included not only
the presidency capitals but also larger military stations. His show in
India incorporated a number of Indian stereotypes (as the title of his
most famous song, ‘The Bengallee Babu’ suggests). A pamphlet adver-
tising Carson’s appearance at the Delhi Institute during the 1870s
revealed a night’s entertainment of the more ‘traditional’ minstrel
repertoire of ‘plantation song and dance’ intermixed with Carson’s
new ‘Hindustanee-English’ songs as well as extracts from London
Punch shows.35 In line with popular viewing habits in England, the
men themselves, either in the form of regimental theatre groups, or
of the regimental band, performed in pantomimes, variety shows and
music hall vignettes. The most popular songs were those that reflected
contemporary British patriotic ballads (such as ‘The Roast Beef of Old
England’).36
Regimental savings banks were introduced with similar hopes that
they would provide another respectable channel for the men’s ener-
gies (and surplus pay). However, although sanctioned in 1820, the
banks were very limited in number for much of the century. Like the
early libraries, banks were restrictive in their policies (and, like librar-
ies, presented as a great dispensation). A soldier was required to give
at least seven days’ notice to his Commanding Officer if he sought a
withdrawal of any or all of his savings. Further, if that officer believed
that the individual intended to make ‘improper’ use of his money, he
was authorized to withhold this ‘privilege’ of withdrawal.37 Savers
were reminded not just of the rules of the bank, but also printed in
every savings book in bold, capital letters was the phrase ‘OBEDI-
ENCE IS THE FIRST DUTY OF A SOLDIER’.38 This was followed
by an extract from the Articles of War, complete with a list of the
various offences for which a soldier could expect punishment. From
this, it is clear that banks and these savings books were seen as a (rela-
tively inexpensive) tool of discipline and control by the army. Soldiers’
account books not only reminded the men of the Articles of War, but
also served to refresh the men’s understanding of all the rules of good
conduct pay. The criteria for receiving the benefit of good conduct
pay were fairly restrictive. In order to be considered, a man needed to
serve at least five years, the last two of which he must have remained
96 Erica Wald
out of the defaulters’ book. This good behaviour earned him one dis-
tinguishing mark and one penny a day added to his pay.39 Thereafter,
conduct rewards accrued in five-year increments, up to a maximum of
30 years’ service.

Unofficial pursuits
By the 1840s, the reforming zeal that had led to the introduction of the
canteen, coffee shop, library and bank had all but evaporated. Men
were left to create their own diversions, while still being restricted in
the activities that they were allowed to engage in. The activity that
appears to have been more encouraged both in the cantonment and
on the march was sport. However, even this remained dependent on
the whim of the commanding officer. Cricket was often mentioned in
the men’s letters and diaries and was used as a measure to judge fair
(or fatherly) commanding officers. Brigadier Markham, commanding
a brigade in the Second Anglo-Sikh War, found favour with his men
for his approach towards regimental sports. Markham was said to be
strict, but fair, and encouraged the men to play sport, especially the
‘old but manly game, Cricket’.40Apart from cricket (which not only
had the benefit of being perceived as ‘manly,’ but, perhaps more impor-
tantly, could be organized quickly and cheaply), the sports favoured
by commanding officers attempting to shape the ideal soldier were
those with more ‘practical’ purposes: shotput, boxing, stone throwing
and running. These sports not only required little or no investment
from the Company or Crown but strengthened the men’s physique.
Like other social activities, sports followed a seasonal pattern, with
the cooler months witnessing a great blossoming of sporting events,
both impromptu and well organized.
The competitive gardening suggested by the earlier-mentioned
‘King’s Officer’ was more or less shelved until the 1850s, when Lord
Dalhousie, the reforming Governor General, again took up the man-
tle. The success of barrack gardens, like other recreational pursuits,
varied enormously. In Punjab in 1856, the introduction of flower and
vegetable gardens for the men’s ‘amusement’ was deemed an unquali-
fied success.41 However, in the same year, the situation in Rangoon was
very different. Here, the gardens had been proposed and planned with
the explicit support of Lord Dalhousie. Dalhousie had deemed the
soldiers’ gardens so important that he had ordered a landscape gar-
dener, Mr Scott, to travel to Pegu to draw up plans. Scott’s plan aimed
to create a site with, ‘winding walks . . . shady clumps of trees and
bright parterres of flowers’.42 Unfortunately, these lofty plans were not
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 97
carried into effect and the men all but abandoned the gardens. This
was blamed on the Commissariat, who, it was alleged, had reaped the
rewards of the men’s labours, ordering that the vegetables grown be
collected (due to a purported shortage in greens). The vegetables were
then sold back to the soldiers to supplement their diets.43 The commis-
sariat’s action earned a sharp rebuke from the Military Board at Fort
William, but it is not clear if the men returned to their gardens once
the situation was rectified. Instead of the ‘English’ garden planned by
Scott, the site was deemed to be more of a ‘drill of cabbages drawn
up in close columns the same as for a military manoeuvre’.44 This
wonderfully descriptive categorization of the disagreement over the
soldiers’ gardens is telling and reflects the differing ideas about the sol-
dier himself. For those, like the Duke of Wellington (and, apparently,
the Rangoon Commissariat), who resisted all attempts to reform the
Golem-like ‘ideal’ of the soldier, garden space should not be wasted on
‘coddling’ the men with such frivolities as flowers or winding walks.
However, Dalhousie and the Bengal Board clearly represented the
other side of the argument along with those attempting to remould the
lump of clay: to make a more ‘moral’ soldier, one who would reflect
society more broadly. Even for those like Dalhousie, this was a slightly
uncomfortable idea, as paternalistic, moralizing attempts at reforming
the men did not allow for their equality.
When permitted by their commanding officers, the men used their
free time while on the march to go for walks into the towns and coun-
tryside. Old forts, Mughal gardens and local menageries were firm
favourites. One particular soldier-rambler, Private George Smith,
often wrote of his wanderings in his commonplace book. While on
the march to Cawnpore in early February 1872, Smith used a halt
day in Jaipur to visit the museum built by the Maharaja. Later that
month, the men halted in Agra, where Smith visited the Taj Mahal. He
observed that it seemed ‘as fresh as when just finished’.45 Two years
later, on the march to Chakrata, he took time to wander around the
Dehradun Valley, marvelling at its beauty.46 Another man used a halt
day in Delhi to travel with a friend to the Qutab Minar. They made the
dizzying climb to the summit to look at the views of Delhi and the sur-
rounding countryside.47 The Qutab complex was a popular attraction
for the officer class as well. The recollections of one, Major General
James Sebastian Rawlins, demonstrate the different kind of visit to
the Qutab that officers might expect. On reaching the summit, Raw-
lins was gratified to find that his khansama (Indian butler)48 had laid
out ‘an ample dejeuner’, complete with perfectly iced champagne. The
men, he recorded, ‘drank to the memory of the Emperor Acbar [sic],
98 Erica Wald
and after smoking our fragrant manillas, enjoyed the scene surround-
ing ancient Delhi and the modern city of Nadir Shah’.49
The same sharp class divide that marked soldiers’ and officers’ expe-
riences of the Indian countryside was also present in their rambles in
search of game. Men of the officer class formed hunting parties on
a regular basis, seeking the more ‘traditional’ English quarry of fox
(with the less traditional jackal)50 as well as the larger animals to be
found across India.51 Soldiers, on the other hand, had to be content to
set their sights on smaller prey, like squirrels.52
As Smith’s commonplace book attests, some soldiers expressed a
keen (albeit amateur) interest in Indian history and customs. Letters
to family and friends laid out the histories (real or otherwise) of the
sights and customs they encountered. Soldier’s diaries and letters made
frequent mention of Hindu and Muslim festivals, such as the Kumbh
Mela and Muharram (referred to as ‘Hobson-Jobson’53). Thomas Dor-
rington of the 18th Highlanders witnessed the carnivalesque environ-
ment of Muharram54 while stationed at Deesa in 1840. He watched,
rapt, as the procession, which included men dressed as tigers, and par-
ticipants practicing self-flagellation, carried the Tabut55 before throw-
ing it into the river.56

Conclusion
F. S. Arnott, a surgeon serving in the 1st European Bombay Regi-
ment in 1854, thought an improvement in the health and behaviour
of the soldiers in the 1850s was the result of a combination of factors.
Arnott’s factors focused on changes to the soldiers themselves. These,
in his view, included the recruitment of a better class of men into the
service, better treatment of the soldiers, with an expanded range of
activities provided for the men, and the on-going reorganization and
professionalization of both medical and military services in India.57
The men now recruited into the Company’s service, he asserted, were
‘men of great ability and intelligence, of respectable birth, of supe-
rior social position, and of excellent education’; with this, he noted,
‘sobriety is gradually taking the place of drunkenness and sickness
and mortality are yearly diminishing.’58 He proudly noted (although
his claims seem unlikely and are impossible to verify) that every Euro-
pean regiment of the Company’s service was provided with a bank,
school, library, printing press, coffee shop and ‘an excellent theatre’.59
In addition, other ‘amusements’ were provided which included chess
and cricket clubs, skittles and draughts-boards. He happily linked the
rise in men’s deposits in the savings’ bank with the decrease in the con-
sumption of spirits in the canteen. Arnott and the chaplains were in
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 99
the minority, however, as most observers on the soldiery continued to
reinforce the belief in the men’s irredeemably degraded state. Moreo-
ver, for every claim that standards (in this respect) were improving, it
is easy to find a counterclaim, as we do three years later in an 1857
letter from one British Army soldier, Richard Compton, to his brother,
Charles. In this, he repeated the lament that there was no place to go
in the evening apart from the canteen and coffee room.60
In the midst of debates about army reform in 1868, Sir Charles Trev-
elyan insisted that military efficiency depended on the intellectual capa-
bilities of the higher ranks and the brute strength and agility of the lower
ranks.61 This is at the heart of why even the smallest of social comforts
were denied to the men for so many years. All of the attempts to do so –
the banks, libraries and even conduct rewards – were only very unevenly
distributed across India in the early nineteenth century. Yet, regimental
canteens, daily liquor rations and regulated brothels were standardized
across the subcontinent. Trevelyan’s assertion was one still widely held
in the late nineteenth century – a stereotyped view of the almost animal-
istic needs of the European soldier and the kind of masculinity he could
provide the army. But perhaps more importantly, the kinds of activities
he was encouraged to participate in within the cantonments suggest an
army which more actively attempted to shape the rank-and-file deemed
to be one of the most crucial elements in maintaining imperial rule.
These two views neatly represent the two distinct ways in which
the European soldier in India was viewed. The careful cost–benefit
analysis, which was ever-present in debates about the army, contrib-
uted to the ways in which the men were portrayed. More importantly
for the men themselves, these opposing visions dictated the activities
that they were allowed, or encouraged, to engage in during their many
free hours in the barracks. By the late nineteenth century, the range of
activities on offer expanded considerably, reflecting a changing view
of the men themselves. These activities were infused with overlapping
sets of expectations – not just of the ideal soldier – but also of the
appropriate behaviour of Europeans in India. A reading of their care-
fully managed everyday lives reflects not simply the petty debates over
the inclusion of one book over the other in a regimental library, but a
broader, evolving debate on the daily structures which would produce
the type of men needed to maintain rule in colonial India.

Notes
1 A Grenadier’s Diary, 1842–1856. 131, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections
(APAC) MSS Eur Photo Eur 97, British Library (hereafter BL), London.
2 In 1765, the number of sepoys employed by the British was roughly 9,000;
by 1808, following a period of wars and political expansion, this number
100 Erica Wald
had grown to over 155,000. By way of comparison, in 1790 the num-
ber of British forces serving in India was roughly 18,000. See Edward
M. Spiers, The Army and Society 1815–1914 (London: Longman, 1980),
p. 121; David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–
1940 (London: Macmillan Press, 1994), p. 3; C. J. Hawes, Poor Relations:
The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India, 1773–1833 (Rich-
mond: Curzon, 1996), p. 9.
3 Letter to the Honourable Warren Hastings, Governor General and Mem-
bers of the Supreme Council from General Stubbert, Fort William, nos.
12–14, 11 March 1782. National Archives of India (henceforth NAI) For-
eign (Secret), New Delhi.
4 For a more in-depth examination of the army’s attempts to manage ‘vice’,
see Erica Wald, Vice in the Barracks: Medicine, the Military and the Mak-
ing of Colonial India, 1780–1868 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014). For the interwoven histories of bodily and colonial control, see
Mark Harrison, Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment
and British Imperialism in India 1600–1850 (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999); David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine
and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993); Douglas Peers, ‘Soldiers, Surgeons and the
Campaigns to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Colonial India,
1805–1860’, Medical History, vol. 42, no. 2 (1998), pp. 137–60; Kenneth
Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and
Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (London: Weidenfeld and Nichol-
son, 1980).
5 William Geddes, Clinical Illustrations of the Diseases of India: As Exhib-
ited in the Medical History of a Body of European Soldiers for a Series of
Years from Their Arrival in That Country (London: Smith, Elder & Co,
1846).
6 Edward M. Spiers, The Late Victorian Army, 1868–1902 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 2.
7 Herman de Watteville, The British Soldier: His Daily Life from Tudor to
Modern Times (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1954), p. 78.
8 Hawes, Poor Relations, p. 12.
9 Ibid.
10 Hew Strachan, Wellington’s Legacy: The Reform of the British Army,
1830–54 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 55.
11 R. H. Morrison, ‘The Cavalry Soldier in India’, Colburn’s United Service
Magazine, vol. XIII (1896), p. 511.
12 James notes that in 1786, nearly all of the 389 men of the 4th Bombay
European Battalion gave their previous occupation as labourer, although
there was a handful of craftsmen and butchers. Lawrence James, Raj: The
Making and Unmaking of British India (London: Little, Brown and Com-
pany, 1997), p. 136. For conditions of service in the Company army, see
Peter Stanley, White Mutiny: British Military Culture in India, 1825–1875
(London: Hurst, 1998), p. 21.
13 Letter 15, 22 February 1838 from Gunner Fitzhugh O’Reilly to Mr W.
P. Mauger. Mauger Fitzhugh Monk, The Book of Mauger; the Life of
Mauger Fitzhugh Monk, aka Gunner Fitzhugh O’Reilly. 1838. APAC
MSS Eur C575/1, BL.
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 101
14 Mauger Fitzhugh Monk, Letter 16, to Mrs Sarah Magrath from Mauger
Monk, 1 July 1839. The Book of Mauger; the Life of Mauger Fitzhugh
Monk, aka Gunner Fitzhugh O’Reilly 1838. APAC Mss Eur C575/1.
15 Stanley, White Mutiny, p. 21.
16 This culminated in the Elementary Education Act of 1880, which made
school attendance compulsory for children between the ages of 5 and 10.
17 A King’s Officer (anon.), Remarks on the Exclusion of Officers of His
Majesty’s Service from the Staff of the Indian Army’ and on the Present
State of the European Soldier in India, Whether as Regards His Services,
Health, or Moral Character; with a Few of the Most Eligible Means of
Modifying the One and Improving the Other, Advocated and Considered
(London: T & G Underwood, 1825), p. 87.
18 A Grenadier’s Diary, 1842–1856. APAC MSS Eur Photo Eur 97.
19 Linda Colley argues that in the late eighteenth century, the higher levels
of participation and taxation required from the working classes in Eng-
land resulted in an increased awareness of the ‘nation’. See Linda Colley,
Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT; London: Yale
University Press, 1992), p. 370. However, soldiers in India continued to be
viewed singularly as imperial drudges for some time to come.
20 A Grenadier’s Diary, 1842–1856. APAC MSS Eur Photo Eur 97.
21 Ibid.
22 November 1847, ibid., 38.
23 Norman Chevers, ‘On the Means of Preserving the Health of European
Soldiers in India’, Indian Annals of Medical Science, vol. 5 (1858), p. 760.
24 Henry Piddington, A Letter to the European Soldiers in India on the
Substitution of Coffee for Spirituous Liquors (Calcutta: The Englishman
Press, 1839).
25 This rule was later relaxed and the men were allowed to take books into
the barracks with them (a fact which enabled the literate among them
to read aloud to their non-literate peers). See Sharon Murphy, ‘Libraries,
Schoolrooms, and Mud Gadowns: Formal Scenes of Reading at East India
Company Stations in India, c. 1819–1835’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, Series 3, vol. 21, no. 4 (2011), p. 465. Murphy does not state
the percentage of literate soldiers, making it difficult to assess the potential
success of these reading rooms.
26 Extract Military Letter from Bombay, 29 January 1823. Bombay Military
Collection, Reply to the Communication from the Court on the Subject
of the Supply of Books for the use of European Soldiers, Military Depart-
ment Special Collections 1823, APAC L/MIL/5/384, 85a.
27 For more on the regulation of sex and drink, see Wald, Vice in the Barracks:
Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 1780–1868.
28 Extract Military Letter from Bombay, 29 January 1823. APAC L/
MIL/5/384, 85a.
29 Ibid.
30 Roughly 7 pence, ½ penny. John Box, The Letters of John Box. APAC
MSS Eur D/854.
31 17 March 1866, Henry Wisewould, Diary of a Private of the 16th Queens
Lancers. APAC MSS Eur F635.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
102 Erica Wald
34 11 June 1868, ibid. It should, however, be noted that the cavalry was
viewed by many as being composed of more ‘refined’ men. Therefore, the
presence of activities such as the theatre comes as less of a surprise.
35 ‘Dave Carson’s Minstrels’ (Benares: Medical Hall Press [n.d. c. 1870]).
36 See, for example, 25 December 1875, George Smith, The Commonplace
book of Private George Smith. 1874. APAC MSS EUR C/548; 2 June 1868,
Diary of a Private of the 16th Queens Lancers. APAC MSS Eur F635, BL.
37 Rules Establishing Regimental Savings Banks in the Regiments of the Brit-
ish and Indian Armies Serving in Bengal, with the Forms in Use (Calcutta:
Military Orphan Press, 1860), p. 4.
38 Office Rules of the Government Savings Bank. Military Account Books,
Misc. 1858, APAC L/AG/9/22/5.
39 Regiment of Bengal Fusiliers, Account Book of Jeremiah Gancy, No 2485.
Military Account Books, Miscellaneous 1858, APAC L/AG/9/22/5.
40 A Grenadier’s Diary, 1842–1856. APAC MSS Eur Photo Eur 97.
41 India Military Dispatch, 6 February 1856, Number 33, Dispatches to
India and Bengal, 2 January to 26 February 1856, APAC E/4/834.
42 Letter to Captain Henry Hopkinson, Commissioner of Pegu, from Lieu-
tenant Colonel A Cunningham, Chief Engineer Pegu and Tenasserim, 16
July 1857, Report on the Result of the Introduction of Soldier’s Gardens
in the Province of Pegu, Military Department, Collection 64. Board’s Col-
lections 1857, APAC F/4/2699/191774.
43 Extract Military Letter from Bengal, 5 October 1857, Report of the Result
of the Introduction of Soldier’s Gardens in the Province of Pegu, Military
Department, Collection 64, Board’s Collections 1857, APAC F/4/191774.
44 Letter to Captain Henry Hopkinson, Commissioner of Pegu, from Lieu-
tenant Colonel A Cunningham, Chief Engineer Pegu and Tenasserim,
16 July 1857, Report on the Result of the Introduction of Soldier’s Gar-
dens in the Province of Pegu, Military Department, Collection 64, APAC
F/4/2699/191774.
45 The Commonplace book of Private George Smith, APAC MSS EUR C/548.
46 Ibid.
47 A Grenadier’s Diary, 1842–1856, APAC MSS Eur Photo Eur 97.
48 A khansama, or chief steward, was a household servant in charge of
organizing the cooks and cooking.
49 Major General James Sebastian Rawlins, The Autobiography of an Old
Soldier, or, Recollections of Fifty Years in India, 1883, APAC MSS Eur
F/258/1, BL.
50 This assorted game, hunted with a varied pack of dogs, gave rise to the
term ‘Bobbery Pack’, a corruption of the term Baap Re.
51 The Autobiography of an Old Soldier, or, Recollections of Fifty Years in
India, APAC MSS Eur F/258/1.
52 A Grenadier’s Diary, 1842–1856, APAC MSS Eur Photo Eur 97.
53 The term ‘Hobson-Jobson’ is a corruption of the cries of Ya Hassan! Ya
Hussain! made during the procession.
54 For an analysis of the procession in Bombay, see Prashant Kidambi, The
Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture
in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 124.
55 The tarbut, or ta’ziya, is the model of Hussein’s tomb at Karbala.
 ‘At Ease, Soldier’ 103
56 Diary of Thomas Dorrington, HM 18th Highlanders. ‘Sketch of a Sol-
dier’s Voyages and Travels’ 1847, APAC Mss Eur F/550, BL.
57 F. S. Arnott, ‘Report on the Health of the 1st Bombay European Regiment
(Fusiliers), from 1st April 1846 to 31st March 1854’, Transactions of the
Medical and Physical Society of Bombay, vol. 2 (1855), p. 110.
58 Ibid., p. 112.
59 Ibid., pp. 112–13.
60 Letter to Charles Compton from Richard Compton, 12 Royal Lancers,
Bangalore, dated 21 February 1857, APAC MSS EUR C243.
61 Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, K.C.B., The British Army in 1868 (London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1868), p. 16.
5 ‘The blind, brutal, British
public’s bestial thirst for blood’
Archive, memory and W. H.
Russell’s (re)making of the
Indian Mutiny1
Douglas M. Peers

‘Not one year home from the Crimea and I am once more on my way
to the East – another and farther East.’2 So wrote William Howard
Russell who had been dispatched to India at the close of 1857 to pro-
vide eyewitness coverage of the Indian Mutiny and British responses
to it.3 The mutiny of sepoy regiments at the cantonment of Meerut
on the morning of 10 May 1857 and the subsequent spread of disaf-
fection to other garrisons in north and central India put British rule
in jeopardy. A good deal of northern India, particularly large swathes
of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh, became in effect no-go
zones for the British, and there were fears that the conflagration would
soon spread to other parts of India. Much of this fear was driven by
rumours of European women and children being sexually assaulted
and murdered which in turn provoked brutal acts of retaliation. The
sheer scale of the drama unfolding in India gripped the British public,
and newspapers scrambled to secure timely and exciting narratives.
Russell declared that his decision to go to India was motivated pri-
marily by his wish to establish the veracity of the seemingly endless
reports of rape, murder, and desecration which were fuelling demands
for retribution. Russell wrote in his diary that ‘I never doubted them
[atrocity reports], but I wanted proof, and none was forthcoming’.4
As The Times’ principal source for the Mutiny, his published accounts
were very influential with decision-makers as well as key members of
Britain’s cultural elite. Charles Dickens, for example, was prompted
to write to Russell to tell him that ‘Everybody talks about your letters
and everybody praises them’.5 Russell played a major role in memori-
alizing the mutiny through his letters and his published diary: of the
latter he noted that ‘three large editions were sold with such rapid-
ity, that I could not make the corrections for the haste wherewith the
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 105
original sheets were passed through the press in order to satisfy the
exigencies of my publishers’.6
What Russell found and attempted to convey to his readers was a
situation in which race had become the overarching determinant, and
where in this ‘farther east’, and despite his efforts to report the ‘truth’,
the potent combination of racial antagonisms and colonial anxieties
led him to despair that the gulf between colonizer and colonized had
become nearly unbridgeable. Some 20 years after the Mutiny, when
writing a chapter for a multi-volume history of England, he returned
to these events and in particular the massacre at Kanpur [Cawnpore],
lamenting that there would be found the ‘well in which . . . was buried
for long years, perhaps forever, all sympathy between the Englishman
and the Indian’.7
British writings on the Mutiny clearly illustrate that the arrogance
and confidence often displayed by writers on India was but a thin
veneer. In the century preceding the Mutiny, colonial conquest and con-
solidation of authority was inextricably linked to military power, yet
this power was dangerously dependent upon the co-option of Indian
capital and Indian manpower. Consequently, Anglo-Indian militarism
was as much a reflection of British anxieties as it was arrogance, occa-
sioned by the realization that colonial authority rested upon rather
brittle foundations.8 Paranoia was just as commonplace as pride. In
his study of the information order in colonial India, Christopher Bayly
has persuasively demonstrated that while the British were certainly
eager to acquire, collate, and disseminate information, there were
occasions when their supply of information dried up and it was then
that imagination and anxiety came to fill in the blanks.9 More recently,
Kim Wagner has shown how such intelligence failures were not only
a regular feature of colonial rule but that they were predicated upon
deeply rooted structural anxieties which had become entrenched by
the events of 1857–8. From that perspective, what has become labelled
‘Orientalism’ resulted as much from a lack of information as from a
monopoly over such information. These undercurrents of anxiety and
of ambivalence, which lay barely submerged beneath the pride and
complacency with which Anglo-Indian culture was popularly associ-
ated, were captured in many literary and journalistic works of the day
including those by William Howard Russell.
An imperial crisis of unprecedented proportions, both in terms of
its scale and its domestic consequences, the Rebellion was also the first
imperial war to be so publicly and closely scrutinized by the media.
It was this media focus that persuaded Christopher Herbert to see
it ‘not as a geopolitical event but as a literary and in effect a fictive
106 Douglas M. Peers
one’.10 Yet the vocabulary, tropes, and meanings through which war
and empire were rendered comprehensible to their audience did not
originate within a simple bilateral transfer of images and reports from
the periphery to the metropole. Instead, they were part of a wider
imperial matrix, one in which the boundaries between centre and
periphery became blurred as ideas and impressions shuttled back and
forth, from the colony to the metropole as well as between points
along its expanding frontier, adjusting to ever-shifting and asynchro-
nous political landscapes. Many of these ideas and images put into
circulation proved in turn to be both malleable and ephemeral with
public and private communications often becoming entangled. Archi-
val selectivity, moreover, has privileged some traces over others, while
third parties, like editors, often intervened in the transmission of texts.
Russell’s writings on the Indian Mutiny, which comprised his personal
diaries and letters, demi-official correspondence, as well as the col-
umns he penned for The Times and the heavily redacted and reworked
published diary of his year in India, illustrate well the challenges of
attempting to measure authenticity and immediacy when dealing with
sources emanating from such a highly charged period.
Russell’s observations were never as stable or ‘objective’ as they
might appear. For one thing, he was an embedded journalist and hence
his perspective was moulded by a unique and constrained vantage
point, one wherein his mobility was circumscribed, yet he was given
privileged access to the emerging ‘official’ view. Equally importantly,
his writings operated on at least three distinctive registers. His private
diaries and letters, available in the News International Record Office,
differ in interesting and illuminating ways from the diary he published
in 1860 and from the letters that he wrote for The Times. Much of the
candour has been sacrificed in the public versions, perhaps because
of considerations of length, but also due to conscious acts of self-cen-
sorship as he sought to reconcile his criticisms of individual acts of
brutality with the praise he foisted on the heroic efforts of the army
at large. He did admit in his private diary that he had made some
additions as well as ‘omissions of conversations and occurrences of a
private or confidential character, and of purely domestic and personal
references’, but he then reassured his readers that ‘the MS. is printed
almost as it was penned’.11 Close comparison of the two works would
suggest otherwise, particularly when it came to his reticence in mak-
ing public his private criticisms and observations of British brutalities.
Moreover, because of his powerful connections in India and in Brit-
ain, he also wrote letters of a more demi-official nature, ones that
were produced with the conscious intention of their being shared with
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 107
decision-makers in Britain. One of the reasons he was pressured to
go to India was to help provide some political cover for the belea-
guered Governor General who was subject to sweeping condemna-
tions for his alleged leniency towards the rebels, which had earned him
the mocking sobriquet ‘Clemency Canning’.12 Prior to his departure
for India, Russell dined with Henry Brougham and Edward Frederick
Leveson-Gower, Earl Granville. Granville was Canning’s closest friend
and confidant in London, and worked with fellow Liberal grandees
like Lord Clarendon to muffle criticisms of the Governor General.13
The Governor General’s patrons and friends within the government
were acutely conscious of the value of having The Times on their side.
The Times for its part was eager to maintain its close links with the
government, and hence Russell’s journalistic independence was further
constrained. Consequently, rather than seek to establish the ‘authentic
Russell’, I will instead focus on how the very plasticity of his writings
highlights the contingent and contested nature of archive and memory
in Victorian Britain.
The latter half of the nineteenth century has been described as the
golden age of war correspondents.14 It is equally true that it was also
a period of resurgent imperialism and growing nationalist sentiments
in Britain. These are not unrelated phenomena. An early commentator
on war correspondents noted that ‘Graphic pictures of the life of the
camp and incidents of the battle are the stuff that patriotism thrives
on’.15 The British public’s sense of empire and their place within it
was largely the product of war correspondents and war artists, for
colonial wars provided excellent grist for the publisher’s mill. The
American correspondent Frederick Palmer wrote that in the days of
Britain’s colonial wars, ‘a regular war correspondent was considered
as necessary a member of a great British newspaper’s staff as an expert
in finance, sports, music or drama’.16 The poet laureate of the British
Empire, Rudyard Kipling was equally convinced of the relationship
that bound imperialism and militarism together. In his first novel, The
Light That Failed (1891), a recently arrived war correspondent is told,
‘You’re sent out when a war begins, to minister to the blind, brutal,
British public’s bestial thirst for blood.’17
It has been suggested that war reporting came of age on 14 Novem-
ber 1854 when readers of The Times were treated to a lengthy account
of a rather foolhardy and futile cavalry charge made in a distant thea-
tre of war. ‘They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun
in all the pride and splendour of war.’18 This much-quoted descrip-
tion of the charge of the Light Brigade helped not only to affirm new
standards for war reporting, with authentic (or seemingly authentic)
108 Douglas M. Peers
first-hand accounts replacing paraphrased excerpts from official dis-
patches, it also established the career of the first war correspondent:
William Howard Russell. Russell provides an excellent vantage point
from which to consider the interconnectedness of war and imperial-
ism. He is commonly viewed as the first professional war correspond-
ent. That is certainly how he became celebrated after his death: the
epitaph on his memorial in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London
declared him to be ‘the first and greatest war correspondent’.19 In a
letter to Charles Dilke, Russell referred to himself as the ‘father of
the race – the miserable parent of a luckless tribe’, and he did accept
the parentage which had been thrust upon him.20 His reputation was
initially made on the battlefields of the Crimean War, where his scath-
ing reports for The Times on military inefficiency were juxtaposed
against an almost reverential respect for the rank and file of the British
Army. War reports had hitherto consisted largely of dry descriptions
of military campaigns or brief statements on the outcome of specific
battles. Russell provided in their place lengthy and evocative accounts
of battles – ones intended to make the reader feel that he/she (though
Russell assumed that most of his readers would be male) was actually
present during the fighting. In his published diary, Russell disingenu-
ously observed that ‘whilst I was in India I had no authors to consult,
no books to read, and I had no guides but my own perceptions; but
neither had I any prejudices to overcome nor theories to support’.21
The text which accompanied a gentle caricature of him in Vanity
Fair declared him to be ‘An Irishman by birth, and by profession an
advocate, Mr. Russell has been devoted from the first years of his man-
hood to the task of modernizing the English Press’.22 Evelyn Wood, a
future Field Marshal in the British Army and recipient of a Victoria
Cross during the Mutiny, wrote of him, ‘he combined the accuracy of
an Englishman, the shrewdness of a Scotchman, and the humorous
wit of an Irishman.’23 It is not easy to measure the significance of his
Irish background, though the fact that contemporaries made frequent
reference to his Irish background is suggestive. Religious issues are of
particular relevance, for not only was his childhood obviously influ-
enced by sectarian question, he chose to marry a Catholic – a course
of action that proved difficult as both families registered their displeas-
ure. Perhaps this accounts for his adopting a moderate Anglican reli-
gious identity. Politically, he is best described as a moderate: in today’s
terms he would best be described as a red Tory. He made one run for
public office, an unsuccessful bid as the Conservative candidate for
Chelsea in 1869, and he numbered the conservative Carleton Club
among his hangouts.
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 109
Russell’s big break had come with the outbreak of the Crimean War.
The editor of The Times, John Thadeus Delane, initially asked him to
accompany some British troops who were destined for the front. Rus-
sell ended up staying for most of the war, providing regular accounts
of the military actions in which the British were engaged. He also drew
the British public’s attention to the shameful conditions experienced
by British soldiers, thereby helping to recast popular impression of the
British soldier from drunken scum to Christian hero.24 Russell’s letters
were often lengthy affairs, much longer than a newspaper reader today
would expect from a columnist. They were upwards of six thousand
words each, with perhaps two per week appearing.
The effectiveness of Russell’s writings was largely due to his vary-
ing the pace of the story; this meant that the reader’s attention was
maintained and dramatic moments could be better accentuated. He
gained a reputation for accuracy and impartiality, though such char-
acteristics need to be probed more deeply. While a number of those
present declared many of his descriptions to be accurate (a letter from
the mint master at Constantinople who visited Sebastopol shortly after
its capture confirmed the truthfulness of Russell’s description),25 they
were not always the result of his own observations. Instead, he was
dependent upon a network of informants who in the Crimea consisted
largely of junior officers (senior officers were too annoyed at him
for his damning indictments of the conditions in which the soldiers
lived). Moreover, no matter how determined Russell was to be accu-
rate and fair‑minded, he lacked military experience and therefore did
not always have a firm understanding of what was happening. Haste
imposed by sailing deadlines for the transmission of reports by ship
also meant that he did not always check his facts as thoroughly as he
might have otherwise.26
If Russell’s reputation had been established in the Crimea, whoever
wrote his obituary in The Times opined that his best writings were
those that he produced during the latter stages of the Indian Rebellion
of 1857–8.27 I suspect that Delane would likely have concurred for as
he had written to Russell on 8 May 1858, ‘we are at last beginning
to learn something about India, which was always before a mystery –
as far removed from our sight and which it was impossible to com-
prehend as the fixed stars.’28 Even the Saturday Review, which was
not normally inclined to treating The Times favourably proclaimed,
‘Mr. Russell’s Indian letters display the vivid genius of Froissart, with-
out the gossiping credulity which naturally belongs to the fourteenth
century.’29 Phillip Knightley concluded that this first generation of
war correspondents ‘pandered to the bloodthirsty tastes of the age,
110 Douglas M. Peers
chronicling the deaths of thousands of men with little concern beyond
whether the event they were witnessing would make a good report’.30
Russell’s vivid and impassioned writings buttressed tendencies already
inherent in Victorian society that framed the empire in largely military
terms.
Key reasons for why the second half of the nineteenth century came
to be called the golden age of war correspondents include the fact that
there was little or no systemic official censorship, war correspondents
were able to roam about relatively unchecked, and wars in far off
lands appealed to the growing literate population in the United King-
dom. Warfare in this period could still be glimpsed through a colonial
prism, one which yielded a much more romanticized impression than
would soon be the case with the advent of industrial warfare. Moreo-
ver, battles were still relatively comprehensible. They took place on a
sufficiently small scale as to enable the writer to provide readers with
both a bird’s eye of the overall action and ground-level impressions of
the actual fighting. Colonial campaigns provided opportunities which
would not exist in the twentieth century when correspondents had to
contend with campaigns covering huge frontages and where human
actions were increasingly overshadowed by mechanization. Typical
colonial campaigns, at least in so far as they were presented to the
public, took place within a carefully bounded arena.
Providing a narrative of the Indian rebellion proved much more
challenging as military mutinies shaded into civil uprisings and the
cast of characters and the field of action remained in constant flux.
Much of the fighting that took place in northern India in the fall of
1857 and spring and summer of 1858 was difficult to capture. It is
notable that much of what Russell wrote about, and which for many
readers in Britain came to define the Indian Mutiny, was the relief of
the British Residency at Lucknow – a prolonged operation designed
to lift the siege which had imperilled British authority in one of the
most symbolically significant cities in northern India, the capital of
the recently ousted Nawab of Awadh (or Oudh as it was then known).
Russell documented the methodical advance of a British force that
took 20 days to fight its way through a densely fortified city which had
by then become the last major urban bastion of rebel activity.
It is important to note that this was the third attempt to retake
Lucknow. A column had been dispatched in the early autumn of 1857
under the command of Henry Havelock to relieve the British Resident
at Lucknow, Henry Lawrence, and the garrison under his command.
It had just enough force to punch its way through to the Residency
wherein was holed up the garrison, arriving there on 25 September,
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 111
but it was not strong enough to subdue the rebels in the area or to
keep open the lines of communication between Lucknow and British
garrisons elsewhere in Awadh. Havelock decided to use his force to
reinforce the defenders in Lucknow, having discovered more food in
storage than they had anticipated, and wait for a larger British force
to lift the siege. A much larger force under Colin Campbell, the Com-
mander-in-Chief (later ennobled as Lord Clyde), re-established con-
tact with the garrison on 16 November 1857. This force was strong
enough to rescue the garrison and make a fighting withdrawal to Kan-
pur. Lucknow fell into rebel hands and the re-establishment of colonial
authority came only in March 1858 when a still larger force, again
under Campbell, marched through Awadh. Both rescuers and rescued
readily lent themselves to heroic treatments and the story of how it
took three relief attempts to save Lucknow from the rebels came to
characterize the sacrifices that Britain had to make to restore author-
ity in India. So potent was this symbolism that one of the final actions
undertaken by the British in 1947 when they left India was to send a
small detachment of troops to Lucknow where they lowered the Union
Jack that had flown day and night ever since the Mutiny, the only site
in the British Empire to enjoy that privilege.
Commercial calculations also help to account for the media’s focus on
colonial wars. The rise of a mass reading public hastened the commod-
itization of news, and editors competed with each other for a slice of the
expanding market. Military and imperial narratives had a ready audi-
ence at hand. Russell’s history of the Crimean War, while not strictly
speaking a colonial war, was by nineteenth-century standards a best-
seller, selling at least 200,000 copies.31 As the one-time Indian Army
officer, journalist, and essayist J. W. Kaye reminded his readers, ‘the
war-maker is sure of popular applause’ because his actions are ‘ever
intelligible to the multitude.’32 War made for gripping reading, especially
when it was set in an exotic location, for it provided dramatic stories of
bravery, villainy, comedy, and tragedy. Even parody was included, for
the army included all types of characters in all types of situation. Kaye
went on to defend battle narratives on aesthetic grounds as well. He
insisted that ‘whilst it has somewhat decayed in the West, the poetry of
war seems to have its freshness in the East’ for ‘the nature of the coun-
try, the character of the people, their mode of warfare, their dress – are
all surrounded with poetical associations’.33 Warfare became an excel-
lent arena within which differences could be drawn, and by casting it in
such a poetic setting the message would have greater impact.
Newspapers vied with one another to get the scoop on colo-
nial campaigns – their success or failure could be reflected in their
112 Douglas M. Peers
circulation figures. Lucy Brown’s study demonstrates that there was
an obvious cash incentive to newspapers to print breaking news as
quickly and graphically as possible – the newspapers that were most
up to date enjoyed considerable gains in circulation at the expense
of their rivals.34 Russell’s Crimean correspondence helps account for
the jump in The Times’ circulation from around 50,000 in 1853 to
70,000 by 1856.35 But to get the scoop required not only accelerated
means of communication, which the advent of the telegraph helped
to facilitate, but also writers who could grab and retain the reader’s
attention. To do so meant recruiting authors who had both credibility
and an ability to write lucidly and entertainingly. Credibility could be
achieved in a number of ways but a common technique was to weave
the correspondent into the narrative in such a way as to convince
the reader of the author’s proximity to the events. One consequence
of this was that the reporter became increasingly part of the story.
This can be clearly seen in Delane’s request to Russell that he ‘tell us
something about yourself in your next letter. You are at least as inter-
esting as India to all of us’.36 A technique Russell used to establish his
authority was to share with readers the details of the injuries he had
suffered in the course of a campaign: in the case of the Indian Mutiny,
Russell refers to his being wounded in an action just outside Bareilly.
Several horses stampeded, with one horse kicking Russell twice: once
in the stomach and once in the upper thigh.37 The latter proved to be
the more serious, causing Russell to have to be carried in a dooly (a
covered litter carried by two or four men) as he was unable to ride
and could only walk with difficulty. He did, however, reassure his
readers that though ‘this is a bitter disappointment to me . . . I have
arranged that I may move with the advanced guard, so as just to keep
abreast of the guns; therefore I shall not miss anything that is going
forward’.38
In the years leading up to the Mutiny, India’s presence in the pages
of the British press had grown rather fitfully, peaking during times
of war and falling off during years of peace. In the 1790s there was
a fascination with Tipu Sultan.39 Later, the Afghan and Sikh Wars
grabbed the public’s attention. Knowledge of India consequently took
on a decidedly militaristic hue. This process was only further amplified
when news of the mutinies and rebellions reached Britain in mid-1857.
While the scale of the uprising caught the British unaware, contrary to
what some have assumed, there had been warning signs for some time
and these had been discussed. Even Delane had written in April 1857 –
a month before the outbreak at Meerut – that he was alarmed at
reports of growing discontent in the Bengal Army.40 Nevertheless, as
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 113
late as August 1857, three months after the uprising at Meerut and the
rebel takeover of Delhi, The Times was still confidently declaring that
it was nothing more than a military mutiny and it would be quickly
suppressed.41 This failure to appreciate the full extent of the uprising
can be attributed in large part to the fractured nature of the communi-
cation links then in place. Getting information to and from India was
a logistical nightmare for governments and individuals alike. The tel-
egraph had just arrived in India, but it had not spread that far inland,
and technical limits to the amount of information that could be dis-
patched through it resulted in information arriving in Britain fitfully
and incompletely. This also posed difficulties for Russell in seeking to
ensure that The Times was first with breaking news. Stapled to the
front of Russell’s manuscript diary were sailing times, postal times and
his own jotted comments as to which permutation and combination
of overland routes would work best in sending letters and packets.42
Russell would sometimes turn to the telegraph for breaking news but
this was a costly decision, and as there was no single or complete tel-
egraph line to Britain, it could still take several days for chunks of text
to reach Britain. While there were more than 4,000 miles of telegraph
line in India by 1857, it was not until 1859 that the British government
consented to a plan to link Britain and India which by 1865 meant
that Karachi and London were in direct contact.43 Mowbray Morris,
the manager of The Times¸ would rebuke Russell for running up the
expenses, noting that ‘these telegrams of yours have never repaid the
trouble and the cost they have occasioned’.44
The Times had not immediately dispatched a correspondent to
cover events in India. Partly this was because dedicated correspond-
ents were still relatively novel but also its managers, like so many
observers in Britain, assumed that it would be a short campaign, and
anyone sent would likely arrive after its suppression. The Times ini-
tially relied on its customary news sources from India: officers and
civilians who wrote regularly to The Times, sometimes unsolicited,
and reproduced articles from Indian newspapers that found their way
to London. The quality of such reports varied considerably. As Kaye
sardonically noted:

Occasionally, in a paroxysm of energy, induced by the perusal of

some stirring intelligence from India, one of them may rush to a
writing‑table, seize a pen, and endeavour to lay before the world,
through the medium of the ubiquitous Times newspaper, his opin-
ions of the manner in which a certain battle ought to have been
fought, or certain political negotiations conducted.45
114 Douglas M. Peers
Not surprisingly given the scale of the uprisings, The Times was bom-
barded with letters and unsolicited contributions in 1857.
It could also count upon the long-standing practice whereby senior
officials would regularly file reports for The Times, anonymously in
nearly all cases so as not to offend the East India Company. Philip
Meadows Taylor (novelist and officer in the Nizam of Hyderabad’s
army), Henry Russell (Bengal Civil Service), and Charles Trevelyan
(Bengal Civil Service and eventual Governor of Madras) were just
some of the on-site observers upon whom The Times had depended in
the past. In 1857, one of their most frequent correspondents was Cecil
Beadon, Home Secretary to the Government of India in Calcutta.46
And, as was common in this period, newspapers turned to each other
and swapped stories. Anglo-Indian editors supplied material for The
Times and other periodicals in exchange for domestic news and intel-
ligence. J. T. Delane had grown disenchanted with this situation, in
large part because he had grown weary and wary of the parochialism
of the Anglo-Indian community. This was a prejudice which he not
only shared with William Howard Russell but one which would be
reinforced by further exposure to this community. In October 1857,
Delane wrote to his subeditor that ‘it will be a great comfort when we
begin to have a Calcutta correspondent of our own instead of having
to trust their abominable papers.’47
As the full impact of the rebellion became apparent, and given the
increasingly racialized tone of reports from India which had become
a subject of considerable concern to the government and which they
communicated to Delane, The Times decided to send a correspond-
ent. It is worth noting that during a brief period when Delane was
absent on holiday, The Times also adopted a much harsher and less
tolerant tone in its coverage of India. It was in October, while Delane
was away, that reports of the massacre at Kanpur of British soldiers,
civilians and their families reached London. Demands for retribution
escalated and cries for revenge appeared in the editorials in The Times.
On October 29 one demanded that ‘Every tree and gable end in the
place should have its burden in the shape of a mutineer’s carcass’.48 It
then attacked the Governor General who was urging restraint, declar-
ing that ‘Between justice and these wretches steps in a prim philan-
thropist’. The clamour for vengeance grew louder and louder. Charles
Dickens, who otherwise was on friendly terms with Russell, ranted
in one of his letters that: ‘I wish I were commander in chief in India.
The first thing I would do to strike that oriental race with amazement
should be to proclaim to them, in their language, that I considered my
holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 115
do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon which the stain of the late
cruelties rested.’49 What the public, however, did not fully recognize
was that Canning’s strategy was dictated as much by practical con-
cerns as it was by loftier appeals to the rule of law. As Canning con-
fided to Charles Wood, the Secretary of State for India, ‘This is [the]
native character. You must knock a native down before you pardon
him. He will not accept your pardon till he is at your mercy.’50 Fur-
thermore, Canning also had his eyes on the future and the challenges
to reconstruction were the British unwilling or unable to secure Indian
cooperation or at least acquiescence.
Delane found himself on his return to London caught in a cross-fire
with members of the government seeking his help in trying to urge
restraint while the public demanded blood. Complicating matters was
the fact that Delane’s brother was in the Bengal Army and the pri-
vate letters he received from him echoed many of the sentiments with
which the government was contending. One thing, however, was clear
to Delane and that was that The Times was too dependent on the
views of the Anglo-Indian community in India. He approached Russell
to see if he could be persuaded to go to India. Russell was the obvi-
ous choice given his familiarity with the army and popularity with the
public. Russell clearly identified with the army: when photographed
he often adopted quasi-military garb, and for 41 years he served as
the co-proprietor and editor of the Army and Navy Gazette. In the
editorial he wrote for the first issue of that magazine, he declared, ‘The
time is auspicious for the establishment of a journal that may deserve
to become the organ of the Services, and the means of communica-
tion between them and the public, for whose interests they exist. In
all honour we aspire to be the organ of the Services, so far as they can
have an organ at all.’51
Yet according to one contemporary observer, Private Wickins, Rus-
sell was far from neutral in his reportage. Wickins accused Russell of
favouring only those units or individuals who lavished attention on
him.52 Similar accusations surfaced in later campaigns that he covered.
It has been suggested that during the Franco-Prussian War Russell had
attached himself too closely – physically as well as psychologically –
to the headquarters of the Crown Prince of Prussia.53 Moreover, in
his tour of the confederate states following the outbreak of the US
Civil War, he found himself drawn to the officers of the Confederate
Army, favourably comparing their dignity and sense of purpose with
the more fractious and less refined northern generals.
At first Russell baulked at Delane’s request that he go to India,
largely out of concern for his wife’s health, but he eventually relented.
116 Douglas M. Peers
His friends in London noted his reluctance, with William Makepeace
Thackeray writing to the publisher John Blackwood that he had
recently dined with Dickens at a ‘man’s party to poor W. Russell who
sails for India on the 26th and is very low about it’.54 Tellingly, Rus-
sell in his published diary glosses over these negotiations and does
not mention his reluctance or misgivings. Instead, he implies it was
his decision and it was driven by his quest for the truth, particularly
whether there was any substance to the rumours of sepoys commit-
ting atrocities against European women and children.55 Certainly, this
concern was an important factor as evidenced by his discussions with
Delane and others prior to his departure. But it was not a straightfor-
ward or an easy decision for him.
Russell eventually reached Calcutta in early 1858, nearly eight
months after the outbreak of the rebellion. Soon after arriving he
joined the headquarters of Colin Campbell, the Commander-in-Chief,
and accompanied it on its march upcountry where he observed the
recapture of Lucknow and the campaigns fought to regain control
over Awadh and Rohilkhand. An important difference between his
coverage of the Indian Mutiny and the Crimea is that he was not able
to roam about as unimpeded as he had been in the Crimea. He was
much more dependent upon the army and hence his perspective was
more restricted. Partly this was owing to the state of the country –
rebel forces were everywhere and so for safety he remained close to the
army. Once, when he set out to do some fishing, he was attacked by
a small party of rebels.56 But, the current climate also worked against
‘objective’ reporting, at least on the level of that he provided from
the Crimea. It was one thing in the Crimea to report back on the
inefficiencies of the army administration. But in India, where the war
quickly and widely became framed as one between good and evil, civi-
lization and barbarism, Christianity and heathenism, it just did not do
to dwell too much on British excesses, incompetence, or inefficiencies,
at least publicly. Consequently, Russell practiced more self-censorship
in India than had been the case in the Crimea. It is therefore not sur-
prising that we find that Russell proved willing in the end to surrender,
though never completely, some of his independence.
Russell’s willingness to cooperate with the government in trying to
dampen public demands for retribution also stemmed from a deci-
sion he had made following discussions with Delane. Prior to his
departure, Russell dined with a number of government ministers who
spoke strongly in favour of the Governor General and urged Russell
to establish close contact with him in the hope that his writings would
counteract public criticism, especially over allegations that Canning
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 117
had gone ‘soft’ on the rebels. At the same time as the government was
coaching Russell, they were also imploring the Governor General to
make the most of the opportunity afforded to him by a well-disposed
journalist. Canning was bluntly told that he ‘would be a born idiot not
to be tolerably open and decently civil to R[ussell]’.57
In light of these expectations from London, Canning helped to
arrange for Russell a place in the Commander-in-Chief’s camp and
effected other introductions as well. Campbell and Canning also
gave Russell access to the telegraph that was being unfurled as the
British advanced. The telegraph allowed Russell to get parts of his
reports quickly back to Calcutta or Bombay, but from there he was
still dependent on slower modes of communication, such as steamers
from Bombay to the Red Sea, which meant that most of his reports
were printed at least four weeks later in The Times. The time saving
was only a matter of days which later caused Mowbray Morris, the
manager of The Times, to complain of the costs which he estimated
at £5,000.58 This was nearly eight times the salary that Russell was
offered for going to India for a year.
Russell was by all accounts widely respected as a storyteller. A con-
temporary assessment of him in the magazine Vanity Fair declared that
he ‘is a most admirable teller of good stories’.59 It went on to identify
in his work the qualities that best accounted for his success, namely
that ‘With a very few facts to work upon, he will sit down and build
up a full and impressive account of a battle or a negotiation so vivid
and life-like that a reader may fancy he has actually seen the battle
or been present at the negotiation itself.’60 A recurring characteristic
in most of his writings was the use of tropes associated with chivalry
for they helped to mask the more brutal realities of war. The strong
nineteenth-century interest in chivalry is often attributed to writers
like Sir Walter Scott who turned to chivalry and the Gothic as a reac-
tion against what were viewed as the crass materialism and narrow
individualism of the modern age. There is much to this. But there was
also an important imperial dimension at work.61 Chivalry helped to
legitimate and prop up hierarchies that were threatened by political,
social, and economic upheavals. Gender roles, questions of status and
racial boundaries – all critical issues in the Victorian empire – could
all be more easily defended and policed by invoking chivalric tropes.
Moreover, the effectiveness of Russell’s writings was largely due to the
pacing of the story – by varying the pace, the reader’s attention was
maintained, and dramatic moments were accentuated.
He also gained a reputation for accuracy and impartiality, though
such conclusions need to be probed more deeply. From rough notes
118 Douglas M. Peers
taken in the field, or culled from conversations with those around
him, he would draft letters which would be converted into columns
in London. Those same rough notes would serve as the basis for a
published narrative that was usually presented as a diary. But his pub-
lished diaries were carefully reworked and there were important dif-
ferences between his private notes, which consisted of diary entries,
self-contained bits of prose and random observations, and the version
to which the public had access. Graphic accounts of British atroci-
ties as well as reports of sexual assaults committed by British soldiers
were omitted from his published diary on the Indian rebellion.62 The
same holds true for some of his later travels: for example his meeting
with Abraham Lincoln in 1861 merits only one line in the manuscript
diary held in the News International Record Office but three pages in
the published version. And even his private diaries contained within
them still further levels of privacy for in places he slipped into a form
of shorthand.
Russell’s most famous and impressive piece of reportage from India
was his recounting of Campbell’s capture of Lucknow. It was writ-
ten up in heroic terms, earning Russell the approval of much of the
military establishment in India. Delane was also pleased, writing to
Russell on 8 May 1858: ‘your story of Lucknow equals the very best of
your Crimea achievements. It has been fully appreciated and you have
not as you had in Crimea a large party interested in running you down
and contradicting you.’63 Relations between Russell and the military
high command remained much more positive than they had been in
Crimea, where Garnet Wolseley, among others, had argued that Rus-
sell’s dispatches had provided vital intelligence to the Russians. This
had prompted Wolseley to describe war correspondents as a ‘race of
drones who eat the rations of fighting men’.64 In India, Russell avoided
such accusations by identifying much more closely with the army.
Colin Campbell, the Commander-in-Chief, even promised that he
would share everything with him but with one proviso: he was not to
disseminate any of it within India but instead could share it only with
his correspondents and audience back in England.65 Campbell’s obitu-
ary in Colburn’s United Service Magazine noted that ‘Sir Colin . . .
never did a wiser thing than when he admitted the correspondent of
The Times to his confidence’.66 For the most part, Canning and Camp-
bell seemed satisfied with Russell’s efforts, though on one occasion,
Canning bemoaned Russell’s reliance on ‘camp gossip’.67
Yet, Russell’s writings did not simply echo the military values and
conventions of the day. In arguing that war correspondents fuelled
xenophobia and ultranationalism, Knightley made an exception in
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 119
the case of Russell, for not only was he deemed to be more cultured
than most of those who came after him, he also spoke out against the
horrors of war, and in particular the atrocities that were committed,
even by those whose cause he championed. More recently, Christo-
pher Herbert has taken this one step further and has provocatively
argued that Russell’s Mutiny letters prefigure the writings of Joseph
Conrad in that their anti-imperialism was anchored in apprehensions
over how empire was corrupting British society.68 His private writ-
ings in particular exhibit a preoccupation with the dangers of going
‘native’, though such anxieties also surfaced in print. He dwelled, for
example, in his diary over ‘the evils of the low standard which Indian
life has forced upon us’.69 In another entry he complained that there is
‘pretty much the same distinction of caste between the English in India
as prevails among the natives’.70 Where the two differ however is that
while Conrad was sceptical of colonial paternalism, suspecting that it
was little more than a convenient disguise, Russell’s writings have ech-
oes of the conservative imperial paternalism associated with Edmund
Burke, John Malcolm, Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Thomas Munro,
to name but a few.
Russell’s letters have been credited with dampening demands for
violent retribution in the course of the Indian Rebellion, and in his
private correspondence intended for the ears of government as well
as for his editor, he strongly condemned the more virulent rumours
in circulation. For example, he was outspoken in his criticisms of the
extra-judicial punishments meted out to captured Indian rebels as he
was conscious of the long-term consequences of what in effect had
become a race war.

All these kinds of vindictive, unchristian, Indian tortures, such as

sewing Mahomedans in pig-skins, smearing them with pork-fat
before execution, and burning their bodies, and forcing Hindoos
to defile themselves, are disgraceful, and ultimately recoil on our-
selves. They are spiritual and mental tortures to which we have
no right to resort, and which we dare not perpetrate in the face
of Europe.71

Such observations ran the risk of alienating popular opinion and it has
been speculated that the ten per cent drop in circulation experienced
by The Times in 1858 was partially attributable to his writings not
being attuned to the public mood.72 He may have earned the gratitude
of the government, but the wider public was largely deaf to his appeals
for moderation and the rule of law.
120 Douglas M. Peers
The fact that Russell criticized imperial policy is not in and of itself
proof that he was anti-imperial, for his criticisms of particular imperial
actions or events do not necessarily mean that he disagreed with many
of the key assumptions underpinning colonial rule. In many cases such
criticisms were contained within prevailing tropes of imperialism. His
diary entry for 10 May 1858, the first anniversary of the outbreak of
the rebellion at Meerut, makes clear the extent to which he identified
with an imperial cause: his insistence that ‘never was the strength and
courage of any race tried more severely in any one year since the world
began than was the mettle of the British in India in 1857’ proves that
he too took pride in the British Empire, at least in abstract terms.73
But if Russell sometimes held back from attacking the military too
vigorously, the same could not be said of his treatment of civilians in
India. From his first contacts with India, Russell fashioned a very neg-
ative image of the non-military members of the British expatriate com-
munity in India. He frequently depicts them in quite derogatory ways
in his private and published writings. In one instance he complained,
‘It is difficult to find out the springs which move the social feelings of
the English settlers in India. There we are not colonists, we are disu-
nited settlers each of whom thinks that his neighbours are depriving
him of a share of the plunder.’74 And by residing in India for so long,
they seemed to have ‘imbibed their worst feelings, and to have forgot-
ten the sentiments of civilization and religion’.75 On 9 October 1858,
the Saturday Review acknowledged Russell’s impact, insisting that
‘Thanks to him we know the truth as to Lord Canning and Lord Clyde
and, what is of infinitely greater importance, we are thoroughly on our
guard against Anglo-Indian terrorism’.76 The behaviour of the lower
classes of British civilians in India cast colonial rule in a negative light,
for they were neither constrained by military discipline nor provoked
by the kinds of attacks that could justify violence such as that to which
British soldiers had to resort. Consequently, Russell’s writings not only
subscribed to, but also helped to propagate, the notion that imperial
culture out on the frontiers was substantively and positively military.
Russell was also convinced that British society as a whole was
advancing more quickly than Indian society. He demonstrates these
sympathies in a number of places, perhaps most tellingly when reflect-
ing on the changing sexual frontiers of British India.

It is said that formerly the corruption of our officials placed them

on easy terms with the natives, the habit of living with native
women then general now rare also brought them into intimate
relations with the inhabitants and it was a recognized part of every
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 121
bungalow in the old times – a zenana or house for women. The
fact the English man has improved whilst the native stood still. . . .
The poor people scarce know anything but their instincts.77

It is clear from Russell’s writings that while he might have railed at

the worst excesses of racism in India, he was never fully immune to
it. Describing his voyage from Kurnaul, he noted in his private diary,
‘some of them (the people) looked very insolent as I passed so much so
I really felt inclined to try and kick them.’78 It is telling that in the pub-
lished edition of his diary, he embellished this statement by indicating
that the people he had passed were Muslims, suggesting that he had
bought into the widespread belief that Muslims were the driving force
behind the rebellion. Another contemporary recorded that in one of his
last letters from India, Russell ‘tells a delightful story which he heard
from the Commander-in-Chief. Alluding to his landlord in Allahabad,
Lord Clyde said, “You doubtless heard what he did?” “No.” “Well,
he was much in debt to native merchants when the Mutiny broke out.
He was appointed special commissioner and the first thing he did was
to hang all his creditors”.’79 In this instance, there is a noticeable lack
of commentary by Russell – he simply recounts the story.
He did, however, judge other instances of violent retribution much
more harshly, especially if they threatened to lower the reputation of
the British by bringing them down in his eyes to the level of their Indian
subjects. Russell tended to distinguish between brutalities attributed to
soldiers – however regrettable they might be – and those committed
by civilians and men not in the vanguard. Extenuating circumstances
were often invoked for the former. On an occasion when two Eura-
sian women complained that they had been assaulted by European
troops, the fact that they were not white clearly informed his response
to their situation. After stressing the fact that they were Eurasian, he
claimed, ‘they were used to such attentions [and thus] escaped worse
than death by ready compliance with the worst.’80 He would not make
excuses for civilians who were implicated in vigilante actions. A num-
ber of these instances made their way into the published diary; others
were confined to his private diary, or were communicated personally
to Delane with the intention that they be used in an effort to impress
upon the British government the need for due process.81 The prob-
lem that Russell had with many of these civilians was that they were
not gentlemen. He warned that ‘I am persuaded that a large importa-
tion of uneducated English, Irish and Scotch into India as artizans,
colonists and clerks or government employs would be just the way to
lose the empire of the east forever’.82 He made much the same point
122 Douglas M. Peers
in his diary, claiming that ‘I cannot imagine any means of irritating
the natives, exciting their aversion towards our rule, and bringing the
British name into contempt more effectual, and certain of success,
than introducing among them a large proportion of vulgar, violent, or
coarse-minded men, of an inferior class’.83
His patrician leanings, with their emphasis on hierarchy, order and
duty, are equally evident in his idealization of army life. When soldiers
were implicated in violent acts, we are often left with the impression
that such acts were the consequence of Indian auxiliaries – loyal sepoys
and Sikh and Nepalese levies – rather than the British rank and file. In
one instance, Russell reports an episode in which a captured rebel was
roasted alive – he expresses dismay that Englishmen observed these
acts of brutality, but then goes on to reassure his readers that Sikh
soldiers did the actual burning and it would have been unsafe to inter-
vene.84 Interestingly, Russell harboured no misgivings over looting. In
fact, following the capture of Lucknow, he tried to purchase an armful
of jewellery from a soldier for Rs 100 – the soldier never delivered, and
Russell ruefully noted later that he had heard that an officer had sold
the same haul for £7,500.85 He did nevertheless acquire a few objects,
including a portrait of the King of Awadh.
Russell was mindful of the impact that unrestrained criticism would
have, and in preparing his letters for The Times or editing his diary for
publication he tended to elide some of the more controversial topics.
In discussions with officials in India, he took great pains to stress that
he did not intend to attack the British sui generis. Instead, as he told J.
R. Sherer, the Collector at Kanpur, he was only speaking about ‘a base
and brutal minority’.86 Russell also took umbrage at the comments
made by one French observer who spoke critically about the behav-
iour of British troops in India, remarking that the rules of war did not
apply in India as this was not a war; it was an uprising and a mutiny
and ‘therefore the rules are different’.87
Moreover, his writings betray much of the same vocabulary typi-
cally associated with Orientalism. He draws from the familiar reser-
voir of Orientalist descriptors – Indians are depicted variously as lazy,
apathetic, vicious, childlike. At Lucknow, before its recapture, Russell
noticed that many of the Indians in the city continued to fly kites – a
popular recreation in India. This prompted him to write: ‘They are
the true composite of monkey and tiger, those Orientals. Any one of
those amicable kite-flyers would probably disembowel you – cut off
your head if you fell into his hands and could not defend yourself.’88
He was inclined to view Muslims with particular suspicion. ‘The fact
is that the Mohammedan element in India is that which causes us
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 123
most trouble and provokes the largest share of our hostility.’89 And
he viewed caste, that Orientalist marker par excellence, as the biggest
challenge of all: ‘Of all formidable things to overcome in the interests
of civilization and Christianity, caste is the most formidable – it is
all but insuperable.’90 Princes and zamindars (large landlholders) are
viewed a bit more positively, but their manhood and vigour is called
into question by the fact that begums and concubines in India were
able to gain so much influence over their men.
Russell’s writings on the Indian Mutiny, significant insofar as they
proved to be such an important vector through which events in India
became knowable within domestic society, are equally important as
delineating the complicated interplay between shifting understandings
of race, religion, class, and gender at a critical juncture in imperial his-
tory. Racial and religious boundaries certainly informed his work, but
these were complicated by his own however imperfect appreciations
of the social gradations within these communities, and his sense of the
perils facing the British were they to treat such distinctions lightly. In
the end, his account of the operations to suppress the Mutiny, while
celebrating the efforts made by British forces to restore order, exposed
the underlying forces which would continue to threaten Britain’s grip
on India. Just as his writings on the Crimea lauded the soldiers while
exposing British mismanagement of the war, his Mutiny letters and
diary could praise the army while calling into question the policies and
practices of the colonial regime.
It is unquestionable that at first glance much of what Russell had to
say was steeped in a traditional Orientalist brew, and that he was ide-
ally positioned to disseminate his message due to his fame, the status
of The Times, and the public preoccupation with such unprecedented
attacks on British authority. But in terms of the conclusions he drew
about Indian society and the role the British could and should play, it
was the Orientalism of an earlier generation, one that was increasingly
out of step with Victorian constructions of India. However, Russell
also recognized that British authority needed to be founded on some-
thing more than force or the fear of force. Indians must be won over
to the benefits of British rule if for no other reason than the British
lacked the resources and manpower to continually put down revolts
on the scale of the recent Indian Mutiny. He declared in his final diary
entry from India:

Let us be just, and fear not – popularize our rule – reform our
laws – adapt our saddle to the back which bears it. Let us gov-
ern India by superior intelligence, honesty, virtue, morality, not by
124 Douglas M. Peers
mere force of heavier metal – proselytize by the force of example –
keep our promises loyally in the spirit, nor seek by the exercise of
Asiatic subtlety to reach the profundity of Asiatic fraud.91

British rule must be sensitive to local customs and traditions, though

it needed to take care not to be seduced by eastern ways. In the after-
math of the Indian Mutiny, he wrote to A. H. Layard that ‘if it were
only that Hindustan may find one advocate for its unhappy cause
against the excesses of Anglosaxonism which elsewhere is the salt of
the earth, but which is an evil element in many respects in the life of
the Hindoo and Musulman because there is no public opinion to exert
influence over it’.92 His belief that colonial rule must adapt itself to
specific situations was a theme to which he would return later when
writing on other colonies. He came to admire Bishop Colenso for his
ability to effect the kinds of cross-cultural dialogues in Natal that Rus-
sell felt were necessary for the survival of the British Empire. Closer to
home, he reminded his readers that attention must be paid to the needs
and demands of its Irish subjects who, like the peoples of India, should
not be taken for granted.
Nevertheless and despite efforts to recast Russell as an anti-imperi-
alist or at least an embryonic liberal imperialist, closer scrutiny of the
archive that he has left reveals that his statements about imperialism
were deeply contingent upon the audiences with whom he was engaged,
and consequently his imperialism had a much more fluid quality to it
than has hitherto been appreciated. In many ways, however, his views
seem to have more in common with old-style Tory imperialism, one
which had a pedigree stretching back to Edmund Burke rather than
that which could claim descent from a James or John Stuart Mill. One
of his earliest biographers noted that Russell ‘always called himself
a conservative’.93 Within Anglo-Indian circles, his lineage goes back
to Thomas Munro and John Malcolm, not T. B. Macaulay or Wil-
liam Bentinck. It was a position that reflected the dynamic interplay
of his myriad experiences at home and abroad, facets of which are
captured by the archives in which we find him. It resonated with his
readers because it not only came to them in a familiar guise, the tropes
and vocabulary were ones to which they had already been introduced,
but its settings were those most quintessential events in the Victorian
imperial calendar: the many wars fought throughout its expanding ter-
ritories. Wars provided proof of the best and worst aspects of colonial
rule, and by examining them carefully, lessons for the future could be
deduced. In a private letter to Delane, Russell declared, ‘I believe that
India is the talisman now by which England is the greatest power in
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 125
the world, and that by its loss we lose the magic and prestige of the
name which now holds the world in awe.’ But he then injects a note
of caution, ‘I believe that we can never preserve India by brute force
along except at a cost which will swallow up all the wealth of the
home country.’94
This acknowledgement that British rule was dependent upon mili-
tary force yet vulnerable because of that dependency highlights a num-
ber of important ambiguities that underpinned colonial rule and in
particular the role that the army played in the ideologies and adminis-
tration of colonial India. While the army came to symbolize many of
the more admirable traits of colonial rule, namely purpose, discipline
and sacrifice, in and of itself the military could not in his eyes remain
forever the principal foundation for colonial rule. This realization
stemmed in part from his readings of colonial society, notably the alien
character of the colonial state and its insensitivities to local condi-
tions. It also arose from the increasingly interconnected domestic and
imperial worlds – India was no longer exotic and isolated, a territory
that lay largely outside British political and cultural life. Improved
communications between India and Britain and growing personal and
familial links with India, much of which were dependent upon mili-
tary personnel or framed in terms of military experience, produced a
much more dynamic situation than had existed prior to 1857. While
the actual political and military consequences of 1857–8 may not have
been as fundamental as some have argued – many of the policies and
procedures of colonial rule as well as much of its personnel remained
unchanged – in indirect yet important ways the place of the military
within the colonial world was brought under closer scrutiny.

Notes
1 Rudyard Kipling, as quoted in John O. Springhall, ‘“up Guards and at
Them!”: British Imperialism and Popular Art, 1880–1914’, in John M.
Mackenzie (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Man-
chester University Press, 1986), p. 50. Recent studies which engage with
W. H. Russell and the Indian Rebellion include Rajmohan Gandhi, A Tale
of Two Revolts: India’s Mutiny and the American Civil War (London:
Haus, 2011); Christopher Herbert, War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny
and Victorian Trauma (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); and
Chandrika Kaul, ‘“You Cannot Govern by Force Alone”: W. H. Rus-
sell, the Times and the Great Rebellion’, in C. Bates and A. Major (eds.),
Mutiny at the Margins: Britain and the Indian Uprising, vol. 3, Global
Perspectives (New Delhi: Sage, 2013), pp. 18–35.
2 William Howard Russell, My Diary in India, in the Year 1858–9, 2 vols.,
4th ed. (London: Routledge Warne and Routledge, 1860), vol. 1, p. 1.
126 Douglas M. Peers
3 While I prefer the term Rebellion to Mutiny when labelling these events,
on account of Rebellion better capturing the diverse acts of protest then
occurring as well as acknowledging more explicit participation by civil-
ians, I have chosen to use Mutiny in this chapter on account of it reflecting
more accurately contemporary understandings of the event.
4 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, p. 2.
5 Dickens to Russell, 7 July 1858, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson
(eds.), The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 8, 1856–1858 (Oxford: Clar-
endon, 1995), p. 600.
6 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, p. 1.
7 William Howard Russell, John Goodall, Peter Bayne, and et al. The
National History of England, Civil, Military and Domestic, from the
Roman Invasion to the Present Time; with an Historical Introduction, by
Henry, Lord Brougham, 4 vols. (London; Glasgow: William Collins, Sons,
and Company, 1877), vol. 4, p. 570.
8 Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the
Garrison State in Early-Nineteenth Century India (London: Tauris, 1995).
9 C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social
Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
10 Herbert, War of No Pity, p. 3.
11 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, p. V.
12 A telling example of the animus whipped up around Canning can be seen
in this excerpt from a letter from Charles Dickens to Emilie de la Rue,
23 October 1857 (shortly after news of Kanpur had reached England) in
which Dickens exclaimed, ‘I suppose a greater mistake was never made
in the world, than this wretched Lord Canning’s maudlin proclamation
about mercy. It would have been bad enough, if the Hindoos lived in the
Strand here, and had the ideas of London vagabonds; but, addressed to the
Oriental character, it is hideously absurd and dangerous.’ Storey, Letters
of Charles Dickens, p. 473.
13 The Times, The History of the Times: The Tradition Established, 1841–
1884 (London: The Times, 1939), p. 312. See also Clarendon’s comments
on the meetings with Russell before his departure. Herbert Maxwell (ed.),
The Life and Letters of George William Frederick Villiers, Fourth Earl of
Clarendon, 2 vols. (London: Edward Arnold, 1913), vol. 2, p. 158.
14 For example, Howard Good, ‘The Image of War Correspondents in Anglo-
American Fiction’, Journalism Monographs, vol. 97 (1986), pp. 1–25;
Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of the Times
(London: Heinemann, 1982); Philip Knightley, The First Casualty: From
the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist,
and Myth Maker (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975). The
roots of this idea can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth
century; as early as 1914 writers were talking nostalgically about a lost
golden age. See, for example, F. Lauriston Bullard, Famous War Corre-
spondents (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co, 1914), p. 1.
15 Bullard, Famous War Correspondents, p. 28.
16 Good, ‘The Image of War Correspondents in Anglo-American Fiction’, p. 3.
17 Springhall, ‘“Up Guards and at Them!”’, p. 50.
18 The Times, 14 November 1854, p. 7.
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 127
19 Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 4. A new edition of Knightley’s work
has recently appeared. Another important work that addresses the devel-
opment of war reportage in this period is Roger T. Stearn, ‘War Cor-
respondents and Colonial War, c. 1870–1900’, in John M. MacKenzie
(ed.), Popular Imperialism and the Military, 1850–1950 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 139–61. There are a number of
studies of William Howard Russell, most of which are either biographi-
cal in nature or provide examinations of particular episodes in his career,
particularly his coverage of the Crimean War and the American Civil War.
Imperial tropes are identified but are not systematically analyzed in these
works. See, for example, Nicolas Bentley (ed.), Russell’s Despatches from
the Crimea, 1854–56 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1966); Caroline Chap-
man, Russell of the Times: War Despatches and Diaries (London: Bell
and Hyman, 1984); Martin Crawford, ‘William Howard Russell and
the Confederacy’, Journal of American Studies, vol. 15, no. 2 (1981),
pp. 191–210; Martin Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil
War Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862 (Athens: University of Geor-
gia Press, 1992); Hankinson, Man of Wars; Ilana D. Miller, A View from
Abroad: William Howard Russell and the American Civil War (London:
Sutton, 2001).
20 Russell to Charles Dilke, 1880, Add MS 43911 ff.4–6 (British Library)
21 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, p. II.
22 Vanity Fair, Men of the Day – No. XCVI, 16 January 1875.
23 Bullard, Famous War Correspondents, p. 67.
24 The reconfiguration of the British soldier into a heroic figure was also due
to the upsurge in paintings which took soldiers as their foci. See J. M.
Hichberger, Images of the Army: The Military in British Art, 1815–1914
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).
25 McK. A. Annand, ‘Sevastapol After Its Capture, 1855’, Journal of the
Society for Army Historical Research, vol. 37, no. 150 (1959), pp. 82–5.
26 John Sweetman, ‘Uncorroborated Evidence: One Problem about the
Crimean War’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
vol. 49, no. 200 (1971) pp. 194–98.
27 ‘William Howard Russell’, The Times, 11 February 1907, p. 7.
28 The Times, The History of the Times: The Tradition Established, 1841–1884
(London: The Times, 1939), p. 317.
29 Ibid., p. 318.
30 Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 44.
31 Richard Altick, The English Common Reader, 2nd ed. (Columbus: Ohio
State University Press, 1998), p. 388.
32 J.W. Kaye, `The War on the Sutlej’, North British Review, vol.5 (1846),
p. 258.
33 J.W. Kaye, ‘The Poetry of Recent Indian Warfare’, Calcutta Review,
vol. 11 (1848), p. 222. In the same article, Kaye asserts that ‘Your Orien-
talist is the prince of story-tellers.’ (p. 224).
34 Lucy Brown, ‘The Treatment of News in Mid-Victorian Newspapers’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 27 (1977), pp. 23–39.
35 S.N.D. North, History and Present Condition of the Newspaper and Peri-
odical Press of the United States: With a Catalogue of the Publications of
the Census Year (Washington, DC: G.P.O., 1884), p. 137.
128 Douglas M. Peers
36 Delane to Russell, 8 July 1858, quoted in John Atkins, The Life of Sir
William Howard Russell, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1911), vol. 1,
p. 342.
37 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, pp. 397–401.
38 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 399.
39 P. J. Marshall, ‘“Cornwallis Triumphant”: War in India and the British
Public in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Lawrence Freedman, Paul Hayes
and Robert O’Neill (eds.), War, Strategy and International Politics; Essays
in Honour of Sir Michael Howard (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992), pp. 57–74; Douglas M. Peers, ‘“Those Noble Exemplars of the
True Military Tradition”; Constructions of the Indian Army in the Mid-
Victorian Press’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 31, no. 1 (1997), pp. 109–42.
40 The Times, The History of the Times: The Tradition Established, 1841–1884,
p. 309.
41 The Times, 3 August 1857, p. 8.
42 Mail from Kanpur to Bombay takes 12 days, Kanpur to Calcutta takes
5 days, ‘therefore if I was to send letters from Cawnpore to England via
Bombay I should post them on the 12th clear day before date of making
up – thus for March 9, I post letters on the 25th February’. It goes on to
list the days when the overland mail from Bombay will go out. Mails for
England from Bombay go out on the P&O steamer on the 9th and 24th
of most months – the mails which leave Bombay on the 9th reach London
via Marseilles on the 3rd following and via Southampton on the 10th – the
mails leaving on the 24th reach London on the 21st and 28th respectively.
During the monsoon months – June, July and August, the mails go out five
days earlier. W. H. Russell, Diary for 1858, News International Record
Office, London
43 John Tully, ‘A Victorian Ecological Disaster: Imperialism, the Telegraph,
and Gutta-Percha’, Journal of World History, vol. 20, no. 4 (2009),
pp. 559–79. The connection went from Karachi to the head of the Persian
Gulf, where the line was joined to the telegraph network being laid out
by the Ottoman Empire which was linked in with several European net-
works. Christina Phelps Harris, ‘The Persian Gulf Submarine Telegraph of
1864’, Geographical Journal, vol. 135, no. 2 (1969), pp. 169–90.
44 Hankinson, Man of Wars, p. 133. Interestingly, W. H. Russell also wrote
an account of the heroic efforts to string a telegraph line across the Atlan-
tic. William Howard Russell, The Atlantic Telegraph (London: Day &
Son, 1865).
45 J.W. Kaye, `Recent Military Memoirs’, Calcutta Review, vol. 14 (1850),
p. 266.
46 The Times, The History of the Times: The Tradition Established, 1841–
1884, p. 309.
47 Arthur Irwin Dasent, John Thadeus Delane; Editor of ‘The Times’; His
Life and Correspondence (London: John Murray, 1908), p. 268.
48 The Times, 29 October 1857, p. 8.
49 Dickens to Miss Burdett Coutts, 4 October 1857, Storey and Tillotson
(eds.), Letters of Charles Dickens, p. 459.
50 Canning to Wood, 27 February 1860, MSS Eur F78/55/3 ff.80‑1. Asia
Pacific and Africa Collections, British Library (hereafter APAC).
51 Editor’s Introduction, Army and Navy Gazette, vol. 1 (1860), pp. 1–2.
 ‘The blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood’ 129
52 Peter Wickins, ‘The Indian Mutiny Journal of Private Charles Wickins
of the 90th Light Infantry’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical
Research, vol. 36, nos. 146–147 (1958), pp. 80–6, 130–6.
53 Brown, ‘The Treatment of News in Mid-Victorian Newspapers’, pp. 23–39.
54 Thackeray to Blackwood, 21 December 1857, Edgar F. Harden (ed.),
Selected Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray (New York: New York
University Press, 1996), p. 321.
55 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, p. 2.
56 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 276–7.
57 The Times, The History of the Times: The Tradition Established, 1841–1884,
p. 316.
58 Atkins, The Life of Sir William Howard Russell, vol. 1, p. 311.
59 Vanity Fair, Men of the Day – No. XCVI, 16 January 1875.
60 Ibid.
61 Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj: The New Cambridge History of
India, III.4, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 79–80.
62 For example, he was quite disgusted at the rates of syphilis that prevailed
among the troops following the retaking of Lucknow. W. H. Russell, diary
entry, 6 March 1858, News International Record Office, London. On
another occasion, he referred to soldiers of the 79th and 93rd regiments
being responsible for a number of rapes, and in an interesting twist on
the now familiar rape tropes of the Indian Mutiny, he describes Indian
women, feeling the shame of their situation, throwing themselves down
wells, some with babies in their arms. This account mirrored the many
rumours of dishonoured European women taking their own lives. Diary
Entry, 26 March 1858, News International Record Office, London.
63 J. T. Delane to W. H. Russell, 8 May 1858, WHR/1/45, News Interna-
tional Record Office, London.
64 Halik Kochanski, Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian Hero (London: Hamble-
don, 2000), p. 43.
65 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, p. 170.
66 ‘The Late Lord Clyde’, Colburn’s United Service Magazine, no. 118
(1863), p. 10.
67 Canning to Stanley, 23 July 1858, #112, Photo Eur 474, APAC, British
Library, London.
68 Herbert, War of No Pity, pp. 64–5.
69 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 2, p. 154.
70 Hankinson, Man of Wars, p. 119.
71 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 2, p. 46.
72 Circulation dropped from 55,000 to 50,000. Kaul, ‘“You Cannot Govern
by Force Alone”: W. H. Russell, the Times and the Great Rebellion’, in
Bates and Major (eds.), Mutiny at the Margins, p. 21.
73 W. H. Russell, Diary Entry, 10 May 1858, News International Record
Office, London.
74 Ibid., 15 January 1858.
75 Ibid., 9 October 1858.
76 Saturday Review, 9 October 1858.
77 W. H. Russell, Diary Entry, 17 February 1858, News International Record
Office, London.
78 Ibid., 10 June 1858.
130 Douglas M. Peers
79 Dasent, John Thadeus Delane, p. 306.
80 W. H. Russell, Diary Entry, 18 April 1858, News International Record
Office, London.
81 One of the most graphic examples was shared with Delane in a letter.
A tahsildar (headman) of a village in the Doab was charged and convicted
of being a rebel, and in Russell’s eyes, he was correctly sentenced to death.
But the day before his execution, he was dragged out by the Magistrate –
Mr Willock – who had him flogged and then he ‘took his lighted cigar out
of his mouth and thrust the hot end up his anus’. ‘How he howled, that
was the joke’. W. H. Russell to J. T. Delane, 29 July 1858, JTD/9/53 News
International Record Office, London.
82 W. H. Russell to J. T. Delane, 29 July 1858, JTD/9/53 News International
Record Office, London.
83 W. H. Russell, Diary Entry, 19 February 1859, News International Record
Office, London.
84 Ibid., 9 March 1858.
85 Atkins, Life of Sir William Howard Russell, vol. 1, p. 305; also Russell,
My Diary in India, vol. 2, pp. 331–2.
86 Atkins, Life of Sir William Howard Russell, vol. 1, p. 342.
87 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 1, p. 222.
88 W. H. Russell, Diary Entry, 8 March 1858, News International Record
Office, London.
89 Ibid., 8 June 1858.
90 Ibid., 25 January 1858.
91 Russell, My Diary in India, vol. 2, pp. 437–8.
92 W. H. Russell to A.H. Layard, 28 November 1860, Add MS 38986 (Brit-
ish Library).
93 Atkins, Life of Sir William Howard Russell, vol. 1, p. 279.
94 Russell to Delane, 20 January 1859, Atkins, Life of Sir William Howard
Russell, vol. 1, p. 357.
6 
From the Black Mountain
to Waziristan
Culture and combat
on the North-West Frontier
Gavin Rand

In civilized warfare force is directed against the armed enemy and his
defensible positions but not against his country and subjects who may
be morally unconcerned in the hostilities and innocent of offence. But
this is not civilized warfare; the enemy does not possess troops that
stand to be attacked, nor defensible posts to be penetrated nor inno-
cent subjects to be spared. He has only rough Hills to be penetrated,
robber fastnesses to be scaled, and dwellings containing people, all
of them to a man concerned in hostilities, there is not a single man
of them who is innocent, who is not, or has not been, engaged in
offences, or who does not fully support the misconduct of his tribe,
who is not a member of the armed banditti. The enemy harasses the
troops as they approach, threading the defiles, and leave their village,
carrying off everything that can be carried, abandoning only immov-
able property – walls, roofs, and crops. What are the troops to do? Are
they to spare these crops and houses, losing the only opportunity they
are ever likely to have of inflicting damages on the enemy, marching
back to their quarters without effecting anything, amidst the contempt
of the hillmen? . . . To spare these villages would be as unreasonable
as to spare the commissariat supplies or arsenals of a civilised enemy.
Richard Temple, Secretary to the Chief
Commissioner of Punjab, 18561

* * *
Between 1849 and 1914, imperial troops undertook more than 60
expeditions against the tribes of the North-West Frontier.2 Partly
because of their inability to pacify the region, the specificities of fron-
tier warfare occupied officers, officials and commentators throughout
the colonial period. As Temple’s account makes clear, frontier combat
was regarded as distinctive: the ecology of the frontier region, and the
supposed truculence of the tribal populations who lived there, were
132 Gavin Rand
thought to require particular strategic and tactical adaptations. By
1914, a host of publications had emerged offering histories of, and
instruction in, frontier conflict: the Governments of Punjab and India
issued increasingly sprawling official histories in 1873, 1874 and 1907,
while a variety of compendium volumes were published either side
of 1900, including Charles Callwell’s oft-cited Small Wars in 1896,
and H. C. Wylly’s From the Black Mountain to Waziristan in 1912.3
Following Wylly, this chapter examines colonial engagements on the
Black Mountain, and in Waziristan, during the late nineteenth century.
The chapter offers a cultural reading of colonial campaigning, arguing
that combat on the frontier was shaped, in important ways, by a cul-
tural exchange: strategic, tactical and logistical calculations reflected
ideas and assumptions about the frontier, its population and their
relationship to colonial power.4 By tracing the development of specific
rationalities for frontier conflict through a series of deployments, the
chapter reveals the intersection of colonial culture and imperial mili-
tary power, confirming Nicholas Thomas’s assertion that colonial vio-
lence was always ‘mediated and enframed by structures of meaning’.5
The dialogue between colonial culture and operational practice
is most clearly signalled in the conspicuously performative logic of
frontier campaigning.6 According to Callwell, the ‘great principle’ for
fighting small wars was ‘that of overawing the enemy by bold initia-
tive and resolute action, whether on the battlefield or as part of the
general plan of campaign’.7 Boldness and vigour were the essential
qualities for colonial soldiers facing ‘savages and guerillas’ for, as Call-
well explained in his analysis of an expedition against the Chitralis in
1895, ‘moral force is even more potent than physical force in com-
passing their downfall’.8 Frontier expeditions were thus conceived and
executed as performances which sought to instantiate colonial author-
ity through the penetration and occupation of tribal territory. Situat-
ing colonial culture and colonial combat in the same analytic field
allows us to explore more effectively how military praxis was shaped
by overlapping and mutually reinforcing ideas about tribal opponents
and colonial authority.9 In short, it helps us to see how culture shaped
not only the attitudes of colonial soldiers but also how it informed
their strategic and tactical decision-making. Reading colonial expedi-
tions as cultural projects also allows us to better understand the limits
of colonial military power on the frontier. While most frontier opera-
tions provided few direct engagements with enemy forces, emphasiz-
ing the ‘moral’ effects of colonial interventions obscured the inability
of colonial troops to force decisive engagements with tribal oppo-
nents. As Temple made clear in 1856, the penetration of ‘rough hills’
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 133
and destruction of crops and houses were typically the only means of
punishing ‘savage’ enemies. The cultural rationale for these actions
helped to empower colonial officers to do something and so to disguise
their inability to effect decisive encounters with tribal opponents. The
rhetorical emphasis on the supposed ‘truculence’ of the frontier tribes,
which was codified in a corpus of colonial ethnography, reflected the
same limits on colonial authority; essentialising discourses of Pathan
fanaticism served to obscure the failure of colonial schemes to settle
the frontier.10
Situating the history of frontier conflict in these contexts helps us
to better understand the role of the military in representing empire
in the metropolis, not least because this approach illustrates how the
instrumentalist concerns of the imperial military are sedimented in
the colonial archive.11 Colonial accounts of frontier warfare – such as
those offered by Temple, Callwell and Wylly – were deeply implicated
in attempts to secure imperial authority. H. C. Wylly conceived From
the Black Mountain to Waziristan to address a specific weakness of
colonial (military) knowledge: to provide a single volume to impart
to British officers knowledge of both the ‘wild men’ they could expect
to encounter on the frontier and the ‘equally wild country in which
operations were to be conducted’.12 The instrumentalist genealogy of
colonial counter-insurgency is overlooked in much of the historiogra-
phy: though there is a considerable literature on the North-West Fron-
tier, there are few detailed, scholarly analyses of nineteenth-century
frontier conflicts.13 Much of the extant work traces the emergence of a
doctrine of frontier warfare to the turn of the twentieth century, a peri-
odization which reflects the slew of publications which emerged in the
aftermath of the protracted, and expensive, operations of 1897–8.14
This framing overlooks the way in which twentieth-century texts drew
on existing ideas and practices: Wylly’s text, like Callwell’s, articu-
lated the specificity of frontier warfare in ways that built directly on
the cultural readings provided by Temple and others in the previous
century. Thus, while a doctrine of frontier warfare was codified only
around the turn of the century, the genealogy of ‘savage warfare’ can
be traced through various forms, from at least the 1850s.15 To explore
this genealogy, and its relationship with colonial military praxis, let
us follow Wylly, first to the Black Mountain, and then to Waziristan.

* * *
Lying in the Hazara district, on the very edge of imperial territory,
the ‘Black Mountain’ comprised a series of peaks rising from a
ridge punctuated by deep intervening glens. The inhabitants of the
134 Gavin Rand
region – mostly Hassanzai, Akazai and Chagharzai Pathans – were
regarded as impoverished and largely insignificant, if occasionally
troublesome.16 Between 1852 and 1892, five ‘punitive’ expeditions
were dispatched against the Black Mountain tribes. On each occa-
sion, imperial troops confronted the ecology of the frontier as well
as the tribesmen who resided there: as Wylly’s preface makes clear,
colonial understandings of ‘wild men’ and ‘equally wild country’ were
mutually reinforcing. As we will see, military commanders frequently
equated subduing the country with subduing the population.
The first punitive expedition against the Black Mountain tribes was
prompted by an incident in 1851 in which Hassanzai tribesmen killed
two customs officials undertaking (unauthorized) survey work near
the border. The principal objective of the campaign, which began in
1852, was to drive tribal forces from the crest of the Black Mountain,
a region which was, in effect, a shared (or contested) dominion.17To
seize the ridge, the expeditionary force was disaggregated, and three
columns advanced independently with the objective of clearing and
occupying the mountain’s heights. This show of force was duly com-
pleted, while other regular troops were left in reserve ‘to make dem-
onstrations’ on surrounding positions.18 Operations continued until
early January, by which point a host of Hassanzai villages had been
destroyed and up to 20 tribesmen killed.19 The campaign was deemed
a success, and colonial troops were withdrawn. In his report on the
operations, Lieutenant Colonel F. Mackeson, the Commanding Officer,
remarked: ‘the fact of the highest summits of the Black Mountain hav-
ing, when clad with snow, been climbed by British and Kashmir troops
in the face of all the opposition that its mountain defenders, prepared
and resolute to oppose them, could bring them against them, needed
no amplification.’20
While there few direct encounters with tribal forces, Mackeson’s
summary suggests there was a significant performative element in the
operations: occupying the crest, demonstrating on surrounding peaks
and destroying ‘hostile’ villages were calculated attempts to project
colonial force against the tribes and the ecology of the mountain itself.
The colonial sources suggest that tribal responses frequently worked
in a similar register: the tribesmen made a conspicuous show of con-
fronting the expeditionary troops, ‘waving flags and flourishing sabres’
and following up colonial forces as they withdrew. Though colonial
accounts of the expedition emphasized the range and effect of the oper-
ations, the transient nature of the occupation and the inevitability of a
very public retreat clearly afforded those who opposed the expedition
space for alternative readings of the engagement. Indeed, the ability of
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 135
tribesmen to challenge performances of colonial power – by ‘following
up’ withdrawals and publicly contesting imperial dominion – was a
frequent cause of concern for commanders and commentators.21
The 1852 expedition did little to ‘pacify’ the Hazara frontier; the
Black Mountain tribes were implicated in disturbances throughout the
1850s and the 1860s. In 1868, a large body of tribesmen attacked a
police post in the Agror Valley, prompting the dispatch of a second,
and more substantial, expedition. As in 1852, the operations reflected
an explicitly performative logic: the force disaggregated, and columns
were dispatched to assert dominion over the Black Mountain.22 Wilde,
commanding, believed that the ascent of the mountain – ‘where no
roads existed . . . through dense forest, and over slopes broken up by
huge masses of rock’ – had surprised the tribes. Having secured the
ridge, pioneering and reconnaissance operations were pushed forward
and troops then destroyed a number of Pariari Syed villages. Accord-
ing to Wilde, colonial mobility, allied to the use of mountain artil-
lery, apparently for the first time, had contributed to the ‘overawing’
of the tribesmen.23 When tribal representatives submitted to colonial
terms, F. R. Pollock, the Commissioner, compelled senior tribesmen to
accompany colonial troops on a march through tribal territory – ‘in
a token of submission, and as hostages for their good behaviour dur-
ing our march’.24 The penetration and occupation of tribal territory
was invested with specific cultural significance: Pollock reported that
this was ‘called, in oriental phraseology, “lifting up their purdahs”’,
explaining that ‘the aims and objects of Government were fully
attained when our troops, at a slight sacrifice of human life, estab-
lished themselves on the most commanding position in the enemy’s
country’.25 As Pollock made clear, particular understandings of tribal
culture shaped both the nature of the operations and the measures by
which their success was weighed. Following a similar rationale, the
Government of India was optimistic about the operations and their
likely effects, concluding they would ‘doubtless convince the border
tribes that they cannot inflict annoyance on our frontiers without ren-
dering themselves liable to punishment, despite the almost inaccessible
situation of their villages’.26 While the material effects of the expedi-
tion may have been ‘limited’, the Governor General reported that ‘the
exhibition of our ability to penetrate into the heart of their country
and to inflict chastisement, if rendered necessary, has produced con-
siderable effect and tends to a subsequent respect of our power and of
our territories’.27
In fact, the Hazara frontier was ‘disturbed’ through the 1870s and
1880s and a third expedition was dispatched following an attack
136 Gavin Rand
on a colonial survey party in 1888 that left two British officers and
four sepoys dead.28 Though it transpired that the party was conduct-
ing unauthorized reconnaissance in contravention of standing orders,
the attack confirmed the sense that the Hazara frontier was beyond
control. Colonial outrage was compounded by the stripping of the
bodies, and further by a series of ‘threatening demonstrations’ adja-
cent to the colonial frontier. Confirming the performative and dialogic
nature of the frontier encounter, one officer concluded: ‘no doubt the
tribes have flattered themselves that we were frightened off by these
demonstrations, and in consequence are more than usually pugnacious
and contemptuous.’29 The disturbances forced a re-evaluation of the
once-lauded 1868 expedition: the Government of India reported that
the effects of the 1868 campaign had proved ‘very transitory’, while
the Government of Punjab concluded that ‘the expedition [of 1868]
failed to convince the tribes of the strength of the British government
and encouraged them in their belief in the accessibility of their villages
to a punitive force’.30 James Lyall, the Lieutenant-Governor of Pun-
jab, concluded that there was no prospect of settlement ‘until military
action had proved to the Khan Khel Hassanzais and the Akazais that
their country was not beyond our reach, and that we had the power
to punish them’.31 The Punjab Government reported that ‘the prestige
of the British government on the Hazara border had sunk to a danger-
ously low ebb’.32 These rereadings make clear, once again, how fron-
tier conflicts were framed in cultural terms.
The 1888 expedition was one of the largest punitive expeditions of
the nineteenth century, involving nearly 10,000 troops. Operating in
four columns, the force began a coordinated advance into tribal terri-
tory on 4 October. The expedition lasted for a little over one month,
in which time there was only one significant engagement – at the vil-
lage of Kotkai on 4 October, where Hassanzai tribesmen and a group
of the so-called Hindustani fanatics opposed the initial advance of the
fourth column.33 Colonial troops deployed Gatling machine guns to
good effect, halting advancing swordsmen before they could reach
British positions.34 Mountain artillery cleared tribesmen from fortified
positions before the village, while a further assault, supported by artil-
lery and machine guns, captured the village itself.35 Enemy dead were
estimated at more than 200, while just five colonial troops were killed.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the engagement on 4 October was the only
occasion on which tribesmen and their allies sought to engage colo-
nial troops at close quarters. Thereafter, the Black Mountain lashkars
(tribal war bands) offered very little direct resistance: there were some
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 137
reports of sporadic guerrilla activity, but the despatches record only
one other hostile action by the tribesmen.
Unable to force further engagements with the tribes, the expedi-
tionary forces manifested the colonial presence in other ways. Road
building operations were pushed forward to create a material infra-
structure which would, according to the Adjutant-General, ‘impress
the tribes . . . with a sense of their insecurity against a hostile visit,
should they offend again’.36 Requisitioning of crops and fodder, and
the signal destruction of settlements, compounded the disciplinary
penetration of tribal territory. Villages were selected for signal destruc-
tion for a variety of reasons: sometimes because their inhabitants were
suspected of being involved in specific acts of hostility (recent or long
passed), sometimes simply because of their putatively ‘inaccessible
location.’ Thus, mountain artillery was increasingly used to attack
villages at greater distances: General W. Galbraith, commanding the
Second Brigade, wrote to the Quartermaster General, to report that
the bombardment of the hitherto-unvisited Kand villages had imme-
diate ‘good effect, inhabitants clearing out with goods and cattle’.37
In lieu of direct engagements with tribal forces, these kinds of spec-
tacular operations were conducted with the intention of ‘proving’ the
ability of colonial troops to penetrate tribal territory. Thus, Garhi, a
Parari stronghold at which tribal forces had gathered in strength and
with standards, and Kopra, thought to be the ‘most inaccessible of
the Parari villages’, were ‘selected for destruction in order to show the
tribe that we had the power of moving anywhere in their country’.38
To underscore this point, the Government of India then approved a
march on Thakot – the most northerly of the Parari villages – and a
location hitherto unvisited by colonial troops. In fact, a column of
troops had been dispatched to Thakot in 1868, but the advance had
been abandoned, giving ‘the inhabitants an exaggerated idea of the
security of their position, which it was now necessary to correct’.39
The Governor of the Punjab wrote that the advance on Thakot was
intended ‘as a demonstration and to exact satisfaction’.40 Despite
precipitous terrain on the approach to the village, a mixed force of
imperial troops reached Thakot, unopposed, on 28 October. The vil-
lage was spared, save for a promenade through the village by imperial
troops, accompanied by the pipes of the Seaforth Highlanders playing
‘You’re o’er lang in coming, lads’. The symbolic and performative reg-
isters of frontier conflict could hardly be clearer.41
After their conclusion, the Punjab Government reported to the
Government of India that the 1888 expedition had been successful:
138 Gavin Rand
‘it has been demonstrated to these tribes once and for all that their
country can be traversed by British forces . . . the whole of the Haz-
ara border has been thoroughly cowed’. In summing up the effects of
the operations, the Secretary to the Government of Punjab reported
that ‘the effects of the Expedition have been far reaching and are
likely to last in the same way as the effects of the Expedition of 1868
have lasted, but with exactly the contrary tendency, the Lieutenant-
Governor feels no doubt. All along the Peshawar border the effect
has been great . . . and there is no doubt that the effect will extend
to Kohat’.42 Anticipating ‘the fear inspired along the border by our
operations’, the Deputy Commissioner at Peshawar speculated that
‘no doubt the account of the ease with which we worked over this
rugged country, our improved weapons, telegraphic and heliographic
appliances and other arrangements has spread far and wide’.43 The
optimism was, once again, misplaced: when colonial troops set out
to ‘prove’ their authority by marching along the crest of the Black
Mountain in autumn 1890, large numbers of tribesmen gathered in
the now-familiar ‘threatening demonstrations’. After snipers fired on
imperial troops, the promenade was abandoned. Even the abandoning
of the march, however, was weighed in performative terms: McQueen,
commanding, was reluctant to retreat under fire and thus commenced
his retreat having first ascended a spur in the mountain’s foothills, a
strategic sleight of hand he hoped would disabuse the tribesmen of any
notion that imperial troops had been forced into retreat.44
Thus, yet another expedition was sanctioned and in March 1891
a colonial force once again marched against the tribes of the Black
Mountain. The pattern of operations was repeated: despite many
‘threatening demonstrations’ tribesmen refused opportunities to
engage colonial troops leaving the ‘Hindustani fanatics’ to provide the
only close-quarters resistance.45 While the expedition was declared suc-
cessful, troops were in action on the Black Mountain again the follow-
ing year and the region remained disturbed throughout the rest of the
decade. While operations were intended to ‘make a show’ of colonial
authority – confirming, once again, the spectacular and performative
nature of colonial frontier warfare – the pattern of engagement on the
Black Mountain highlights the limits of colonial military power. While
Callwell praised the ‘great moral effect’ of operations in the region, the
fact that none of the five expeditions dispatched to the region seem to
have delivered the much-anticipated ‘pacification’ suggests there was
significant scope for alternative ‘readings’ of these encounters.46

* * *
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 139
At the other end of the North-West Frontier, a similar pattern of
engagement unfolded in Waziristan, where five punitive expeditions
were undertaken between 1849 and 1902. The Waziristan frontier
extended for more than 100 miles, from the Gomal Pass in the south
to the fertile valleys and peaks of Tochi in the north. The official and
semi-official histories of Waziristan present a familiar narrative of
raiding and tribal truculence.47According to Wylly, the Waziris were
‘an especially democratic, and independent people . . . even their own
mullahs have little real control over them’.48 The Mahsuds, who occu-
pied the centre of Waziristan, were said to boast that ‘the armies of
kings had never penetrated their strongholds’.49 The Mahsuds con-
firmed their reputation as notorious robbers by launching a series of
substantial raids on colonial territory in the decades after annexation,
most notably in 1860 when a 3,000-strong Mahsud force raided the
town of Tank in the Derajat. According to colonial commentators,
the raid on Tank demonstrated that the Mahsuds were ‘emboldened
by years of immunity, and [by a belief] that they could successfully
oppose any attempt to penetrate their mountains’.50
As a corrective to tribal assumptions about territorial inviolability,
and in punishment for the raid on Tank, the Government of India
ordered a punitive expedition against the Mahsuds in 1861. As on the
Black Mountain, the cultural frameworks that mediated colonial rela-
tionships with the frontier and its population informed tactical assess-
ments and operational planning. It was anticipated, for example, that
the tribesmen would make a stand and oppose a colonial advance in
order to ‘avoid the shame’ which, it was thought, a colonial ingression
into tribal territory would imply. In the event, no such resistance was
offered, and tribal forces chose to engage the expedition only sporadi-
cally, at times of their own choosing and in locations better suited to
their own capabilities. So, having offered little resistance against the
advance of colonial forces, on the night of 22 April tribesmen made a
determined attack on the expedition’s principal camp at Palosi, killing
63 and wounding 166 colonial troops. Though Wylly conceded that
the assault was carried out with great gallantry and determination, he
elided the logic of Mahsud strategy by explaining that the raid was
carried out ‘in the true Afghan style – dashing, but ill-judged and ulti-
mately failing for want of support and assistance’.51 Similar, Oriental-
ist ideas informed colonial engagements with the tribe throughout:
in a calculated show of colonial paternalism, tribesmen were invited
to collect the bodies of their dead following an early skirmish.52 The
offer aimed ‘to mitigate, as far as possible, the bitterness of hostilities’
and though the Mahsuds did not send for the bodies, it suggests the
140 Gavin Rand
way in which forms of cultural knowledge – real or imagined – were
mobilized in attempts to signify the nature of colonial authority (and
its putative benevolence).
Culture appears to have mediated the military encounter for bellig-
erents on both sides of the frontier: when a group of Mahsud maliks
arrived to negotiate terms with a view to settlement, they were solic-
ited to pay a large fine and provide hostages for good behaviour or
to submit to the unopposed march of colonial troops through their
territory, a condition which, as we have seen, was also imposed on
the Black Mountain.53 According to the Intelligence Branch’s his-
tory, the maliks pleaded that ‘we should allow them some pardah (or
screen for their honour), meaning that we should spare them the dis-
grace of submission, or of having an army march into the country’.
In answer to this, ‘it was fairly objected that we also required some
pardah; an army had marched into the country to demand reparation
for years of unprovoked injury and trustworthy security for the time
to come.’54 Whether authentic or not, cultural knowledge provided
an idiom through which the colonial encounter on the frontier was
negotiated. While the penetration and occupation of tribal territory
may have been invested with symbolic significance, this was often part
of a consciously negotiated strategy pursued by both colonial officers
and tribal representatives. When the maliks refused to submit to the
terms proposed, colonial troops struck out for the outlying settlement
at Kaniguram, a site specifically selected to demonstrate the range of
the imperial military. After reaching Kaniguram on 5 May, the troops
performed ‘an orderly march’ through the town. According to the offi-
cial history, one of the town’s inhabitants called out ‘Well done! British
justice!’ Though Kaniguram was spared the bagpipes, the promenade
reflects the same performative logics demonstrated in the march on
Thakot in 1888. In attempting to make colonial authority intelligible,
and then to render tribal subordination in visible and public forms,
colonial officers sought to weaponize understandings of tribal culture
to constitute their authority in specific and meaningful ways. As the
previous example suggests, the tribesmen too negotiated resistance to
colonial authority in cultural, as well as in military, forms.
That frontier campaigns operated in a cultural register should not
detract from the very significant material destruction effected by
colonial troops; rather, material and cultural effects overlapped and
reinforced each other. Hunger was an important weapon in fight-
ing uncivilised enemies, as Temple’s early account of ‘savage war-
fare’ made clear.55 While Kaniguram was spared on payment of a
fine, Makin, a neighbouring town, was destroyed, as were other
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 141
surrounding settlements. In accounting for these measures, Chamber-
lain, the commanding officer, cited the peculiar imperatives of ‘savage
warfare’, quoting extensively from Temple’s 1856 report.56 Overlook-
ing the fact that the expedition had failed to extract submission from
the Mahsuds, colonial accounts emphasized the ‘remarkable fact’ that:
‘a comparatively small British force did successfully enter a most dif-
ficult mountain country, and there, though cut off from all supplies, all
communications, did successfully punish the enemy, drive them from
their strongest passes, and return, with comparatively little loss, to its
own territory.’57
In positioning territorial and material performance as the measure
of the expedition’s success, these accounts obscured colonial inabil-
ity to establish military superiority over the tribesmen. The supposed
peculiarities of tribal culture thus provided a convenient means of
effacing the obvious limits on colonial military power.
Notwithstanding Chamberlain’s optimism, it is perhaps unsurpris-
ing that the 1860 expedition appears to have had limited impact on
the Waziristan frontier. In 1879, another large raid on Tank compelled
the Government of India to revisit their assessment of the 1860 expe-
dition. The earlier optimism gave way to a more pessimistic conclu-
sion: that ‘the Mahsuds’ stubborn and haughty refusal to make formal
submission’ in 1860 reflected the tribe’s view that colonial troops
were unable to penetrate ‘their fastnesses’ or ‘force the rugged defiles
leading to their homes’.58 Another expedition was ordered and when
colonial troops returned to Waziristan in 1881, they set out to prove
their ability to penetrate and occupy trans-frontier territory: the com-
manding officer was instructed to ‘traverse and explore as much of
the Mahsud hills as possible . . . your operations should be deliberate
and free from all appearance of haste’.59 As we have already seen,
this framing anticipated the inability of colonial troops to force deci-
sive engagements against the tribes. As in 1860, there were few direct
encounters between the expeditionary forces and the Mahsuds again
chose to avoid prolonged engagements. In lieu of such engagements,
colonial troops set about the symbolic and epistemological opening
of the frontier, occupying outlying villages and undertaking extensive
surveying operations. In fact, in the absence of direct encounters with
the enemy, one of the measures by which the expedition’s success was
calculated was the scale of survey work undertaken: according to the
Punjab Government’s Military Secretary, ‘much new country has been
unveiled.’60 Military surveying served overlapping purposes, at once
practical and symbolic: cartography inscribed the penetration of tribal
territory in the colonial archive and aided the planning and preparation
142 Gavin Rand
of future operations.61 As on the Black Mountain, the epistemological
opening of the frontier was directly equated with the symbolic ‘lifting
of the purdah’ which the operations aimed to effect. In summarizing
the lessons of the operations, The Pioneer opined that:

There is no measure which tends to the ultimate pacification of

our frontier more thoroughly than the occupation by our troops
of the remoter portions of the country inhabited by tribes who
defy our authority. For it is only by such means that the conviction
can be forced upon them that no strongholds which they possess
are inaccessible to our arms. The course, which they themselves
rather graphically describe as ‘lifting the purdah’ of the tribe or
section concerned, is essential to the permanent success of our
military expeditions.62

While surveying was a mechanism for ‘opening out’ the frontier –

often with significant practical consequences – such operations were
typically pursued only in the absence of opportunities to engage tribal
lashkars. Thus, if frontier operations were often about ‘unveiling’
tribal territory, this was principally because colonial forces had no
effective mechanism for forcing a decisive engagement. While cartog-
raphy was often marshalled to evidence the range of colonial power –
particularly by commanders and officers anxious to represent and
quantify the fruits of their labour – it is worth noting that, before
the 1881 expedition commenced, the Government of India explicitly
reminded Kennedy, the commander of the 1881 expedition, that sur-
veying was not one of the objectives of the operations, an instruction
they subsequently repeated to Brigadier General Gordon during the
expedition.63 Whatever symbolic and practical effects military survey-
ing bestowed, cartographic conquests assumed prominence only when
decisive military engagements proved elusive.
The 1881 operations lasted a little under a month. When colonial
troops withdrew, no submission had been received from the tribes and
none of the principal conditions for settlement had been met. Despite
this, the colonial archive records significant optimism about the effects
of the expedition. The official report was laudatory and the Lieuten-
ant-Governor anticipated that the punishment inflicted would ‘secure
for a long time to come the peace and quiet on this part of our north-
western border’: ‘To the whole Waziri nation from Kuram to the limits
of Baluchistan, has been held up the spectacle of a tribe, numbered
among the proudest and most powerful, compelled to permit a Brit-
ish army to traverse unopposed the length and breadth of its country,
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 143
while from the summit of Prighal and the heights of the Shuedar sur-
veyors mapped and explored valleys and mountains hitherto regarded
as asylums inaccessible to invasion.’64
Reprocessing the official narrative, H. L. Nevill underlined the same
point, diverting attention from the palpable failure of the operations –
at least in terms of the narrow military criterion established at their
outset – by emphasizing the cartographic and symbolic successes of
the operations: ‘Much valuable survey work was accomplished dur-
ing these operations, the purdah had been effectually lifted and the
tribesmen overawed’, though he acknowledged, that ‘the absence of
any decisive military success somewhat discounted the value of these
results.’65
The results were indeed discounted: despite the optimism recorded
at the conclusion of the expedition, hostilities with the Waziris resumed
in 1894, when a colonial force working to delimit the ‘Durand Line’
was attacked at Wana. The attack, which killed 45 colonial troops,
prompted yet another expedition to be dispatched into Mahsud terri-
tory.66 Like most of its predecessors, the Waziristan Field Force of 1895
encountered little direct resistance.67 Evelyn Howell, British Resident
in Waziristan in the 1920s, reported that ‘as in 1881 there was little
or no fighting’.68 In the absence of other engagements, the Field Force
targeted valleys which ‘had never been visited by our troops, and were
looked on as the strongholds of the Mahsud tribe’.69 While the ‘visit’
of colonial troops meant significant material losses in property and
crops, the strategic significance of these operations was explained in
cultural terms: ‘the fact of our having lifted their “pardah” in these
remote glens will doubtless itself have a good effect on the tribe.’70
When operations were brought to a close in March, the expedition
was said to have been ‘absolutely successful’. According to the official
history: ‘All sections of the Mahsud tribe concerned in the attack on
the British camp at Wana were severely punished. . . . From the map,
which accompanies this history, it will be seen that Waziristan was tra-
versed from one end to the other, and that our troops penetrated into
the remotest glens of the Mahsud country, and lifted the “purdah”,
from the enemy’s most inaccessible strongholds.’71
If the spectacular nature of these operations is clear, it should be
noted that, as in previous campaigns, the performance of imperial
dominion in these terms – through signal destruction, promenading
and survey operations – was a response to the Mahsuds’ calculated
decision not to oppose the advance of colonial troops. While the
absence of tribal resistance was sometimes taken as evidence of sub-
mission or deference, other readings are possible. The casualty lists
144 Gavin Rand
from the 1894–5 operations indicate that while only four colonial sol-
diers were killed by enemy action, fully 171 died of pneumonia before
the operations were wound down. If these data help us to understand
why ecology was so central to colonial visions of frontier conflict,
they may also help us to better understand the strategic calculations
which guided tribal responses to colonial incursions. Retreat, obfusca-
tion and delay served tribal ends by exploiting the epistemological and
logistical weaknesses of the imperial military: exposing their relative
lack of mobility, straining parlous supply lines and confounding the
temporal discipline of colonial interventions. These actions were not
the product of inalienable tribal culture or of cowardice; they reflected
calculated and rationale choices which can be understood as such.
From this perspective, we may also better understand the pattern of
colonial engagements on the frontier. Despite the confidence recorded
as the 1894–5 expedition was wound up – and in spite of a body of
troops remaining in the Tochi Valley – the Waziristan frontier remained
disturbed.72 A further punitive expedition was undertaken in the Tochi
in 1897–8, and Mahsuds continued to confound colonial authority
through 1898 and 1899. A further round of operations was com-
menced in 1900 and yet another expedition was undertaken in 1901–
2. In spite of all the operations and despite the optimism recorded in
the colonial archive, the pacification of the Waziristan frontier seemed
as distant in 1900 as it had in the 1850s. In 1912, Wylly concluded,
glumly, that despite the efforts of the previous half century, the Mah-
suds remained ‘almost as turbulent as ever’.73

* * *
Colonial engagements on the Black Mountain and in Waziristan share
a number of common features. Indeed, it was precisely to elucidate
these features that officers, officials and subsequently historians began
to assemble the first synthetic analyses of frontier campaigns. As we
have seen, the imperial military played a central role in constituting
colonial power on the North-West Frontier, though this process was
always contested, as the patterns of military engagement surveyed here
suggest. Contrary to claims made in many of the colonial sources,
resistance to colonial expansion prompted expeditions more often
than wanton raiding did: attacks on police posts and survey parties
suggest calculated resistance, not unthinking fanaticism. Moreover,
despite the confident assertions of finality offered by commanders,
military interventions were seldom decisive: the operations in 1860
and 1881 failed to secure submission from the Mahsuds, and the
settlements reached on the Black Mountain in 1888 and 1891 were
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 145
broken months after they were agreed. The iterative nature of frontier
campaigning suggests the importance of the military to the process of
colonial consolidation but also the limits on imperial military power.
The ability of commanding officers to effect decisive encounters with
tribal opponents was seriously prescribed, most importantly by the
ability of tribal antagonists to deflect, evade and contest colonial vio-
lence. The tactical and strategic calculations of tribal opponents – in
playing for time, in attacking camps and baggage operations in the
rear, in retreating before colonial advances – imposed significant limits
on colonial military power on the frontier.74
Faced with these limits, and with other resistance, colonial cam-
paigns on the frontier developed wider and alternative means for
‘punishing’ tribal enemies. These included the destruction of crops and
property, as well as the penetration and occupation of tribal territory.
These acts were increasingly understood as a form of punitive cultural
transgression equated with the symbolic ‘lifting of the purdah’. Con-
sidered more ‘modern, and certainly more effectual’ than the ‘burn
and scuttle’ approach favoured earlier in the century, these methods
were equally contingent on specific understandings of tribal culture:
while Chamberlain asserted in 1860 that ‘savages cannot be met and
checked by the rule of civilized warfare’ so subsequent attempts to
‘lift the purdah’ appropriated a notion of tribal honour as a means
of constituting tribal punishment. Of course, as we have seen, these
rationales also disguised the inability of the imperial military to com-
pel their opponents to engage. The cultural framing of frontier conflict
reflects this reality as much as it does the weaponizing of tribal cul-
ture. In this sense, the history of colonial frontier campaigns tells us
more about colonial visions of self than it does about the tribes against
whom operations were directed. The opening up of frontier territory,
and the gendering of colonial dominion suggested by the purdah meta-
phor, drew on a series of wider oppositions which were fundamental
to colonial rule. The performative logic of frontier campaigning – dis-
tilled by Callwell into a chapter on ‘boldness and vigour’ – reflects the
instrumentalism of these oppositions.75
In ‘lifting the veil’ from the tribes, and the frontier itself, military
technologies acquired specific cultural resonances which directly
shaped the ways in which operations were organized and evaluated.
Culture was central not only to the representation of combat on the
frontier but also to the ways in which military engagements were
planned and executed. By facilitating the performance of colonial
military power, survey and pioneering operations helped to inscribe
the colonial presence on the frontier, and also to render the frontier
146 Gavin Rand
as a presence in the colonial archive. Military technologies thus inter-
sected with, and gave material form to, the cultural frames through
which engagements were mediated. As we have seen, pioneering, map-
ping and communications were conceived as explicitly political tech-
nologies because their operational significance was accentuated and
understood in terms of the particular cultural effects associated with
the penetration of tribal territory. If military technologies helped com-
manders to ‘over-run’ and ‘open up’ the frontier’s contested spaces,
this was in large part because the pacification of the frontier was
conceived in cultural terms.76 Though the relationship between mili-
tary technology and colonial expansion has been much studied, less
attention has been paid to the cultural frameworks which informed
attitudes towards, as well as deployments of, military technologies.77
While military technologies could provide potent means for express-
ing the range and effect of colonial power, colonial culture shaped
the ways in which military power was imagined and projected.78 One
consequence of the cultural rendering of frontier campaigns was to
obscure the limited effects of military interventions and so disguise the
obvious limits of colonial power on the frontier.
Historians have found it difficult to conceptualize the relationship
between culture and combat on the frontier partly, perhaps, because
the instrumentalism of the colonial sources is widely overlooked. If
much military historiography evinces a ‘preference for the empirical’,
empiricist readings of the colonial archive inevitably recycle colonial
framings, offering what Gyan Pandey called, in another context, ‘a
view of the observable’.79 Thus, even detailed and careful reconstruc-
tions of the colonial conflicts reproduce much of the essentialism
found in colonial sources.80 As the sources surveyed here make clear,
colonial accounts of the frontier, and of the military engagements
which occurred there, were invariably implicated in and thus shaped
by colonial power. Empiricist readings of colonial sources reproduce
this complicity. More importantly, perhaps, they disguise the recipro-
cal and dynamic cultural exchange which is inherent to combat, and is
perhaps especially significant in colonial conflict.81
A more critical approach to the colonial archive, and its absences,
helps to reveal the central role of culture in shaping colonial military
policy on the frontier. The absence of a formal, codified doctrine for
‘hill warfare’ does not mean that the specificities of frontier conflict
were marginal or insignificant during the late nineteenth century. Nar-
rowly empiricist readings of frontier doctrine – which begin with the
formalization and codification of instruction around the turn of the
century – overlook the wider histories on which these doctrines drew,
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 147
and the deeply rooted assumptions which helped to sustain them. As
the previous examples attest, and as Callwell himself admitted, Small
Wars gave concrete and didactic form to practice which had existed –
and indeed had been written about – for many years.82 Though the
doctrine of savage warfare was of relatively late development, war-
fare on the frontier always reflected the cultural frameworks through
which the colonial encounter was rendered, mediated and understood.
This was not simply about justifying violence through an assertion of
the otherness of the colonized; it was also about manifesting violence
in forms which reflected the alterity of tribal belligerents. Viewed from
this perspective, we can better understand the dialogic role that culture
played in framing and delimiting colonial military operations on the
frontier. Frontier operations both reflected and helped to give particu-
lar form to a cultural idiom which mediated engagements between
colonial forces and their tribal opponents. The highly symbolic and
performative aspects of these operations were expressed in strategic
and tactical planning, as well as in the discourses used to narrate and
rationalize campaigns. Framing frontier warfare in this manner helps
us to see how culture and military praxis intersected, and to appreciate
how frequently the latter was made legible in terms of the former. Here
again, cultural and military analyses need to be engaged on the same
analytic field: we need to recognize the cultural referents that mediate
conflict in order to reveal the centrality of the military in the produc-
tion of complex imperial subjectivities.
Specific notions of ‘tribal culture’ were vital in shaping how colonial
campaigns were conducted, and in determining how such interven-
tions were evaluated and historicized. Tribal culture was invoked to
explain the circumstances which precipitated military intervention, the
forms of intervention most appropriate to secure colonial ends as well
as to account for the effects, and more rarely the failures, of colo-
nial operations. Military engagements on the colonial frontier reflect
the negotiated and contested process of imperial expansion. Violence
was central to this process and so too was culture, for culture shaped
both the institutions and apparatus of colonial conflict, as much as
it endowed moments of violence with specific, though contested,
meanings.

* * *
Understanding the connections between culture and combat on the
frontier seem all the more urgent in light of renewed interest in the
region since 2001.83 Indicatively, the return of Western troops has
prompted a resurgence of interest in colonial ‘counter-insurgency’,
148 Gavin Rand
including a number of attempts to recuperate the ‘strategic insights’
of colonial doctrine, notably Callwell’s prescriptions for fighting
‘small wars’.
Somewhat paradoxically, rereadings of Callwell have emphasized
the importance of winning ‘hearts and minds’ by the ‘judicious’ appli-
cation of ‘butcher and bolt’ operations.84 The cultural knowledge
which helped Callwell to explain the history of colonial violence,
and to offer prescriptions on how such violence might be organized
in the future, were themselves products of colonialism.85 Attempts to
recuperate Callwell reflect a double, and circular, failure of analysis:
ignoring the specific historical conditions in which Small Wars was
authored obscures the contingency of Callwell’s strategic thinking and
the structural racism of his text.86 This reading reproduces colonial
binaries, locating reason in the colonial military archive, while fix-
ing and ventriloquizing culture as the marker of tribal difference. Lit-
tle wonder then that so much work on colonial conflict continues to
reproduce the tropes and explanations offered by colonial authors.
These accounts fundamentally misunderstand the role of culture in
mediating – and shaping – the worldviews of both colonial and tribal
belligerents. As this chapter has tried to show, culture shaped the ideas
and practices of colonial soldiers at least as much as it did their tribal
opponents. Colonial ethnography bestowed culture on the frontier
tribes as a way of depoliticizing their resistance, and recent attempts to
harness colonial expertise recirculate precisely the same oppositions.
The persistence of these oppositions and the ways of thinking they
sustain confirm Gayatri Spivak’s suggestion that the texts of ‘soldiers
and administrators’ did much to construct the reality of India.87 As
we continue to live with this construction, and the violence which it
begets, this truth behoves us to do more to understand it.

Notes
1 Government of India, Foreign Department, Report Showing the Rela-
tions of the British Government with the Tribes, Independent and
Dependent, on the North-West Frontier of the Punjab, from Annexation
in 1849 to the Close of 1855 (Calcutta: T. Jones, Calcutta Gazette Office,
1856), p. 60.
2 Colonial understandings of tribal society were shaped by attempts to
know and control those societies. Though I follow the colonial sources
in describing engagements with ‘Pathans’ and ‘frontier tribes’, I am con-
scious that colonial ethnography flattened and essentialised understand-
ings of tribal societies and tribal customs. For more, see Magnus Marsden
and Benjamin Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (London: C
Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd., 2012), pp. 3–10, esp. p. 217.
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 149
3 William Henry Paget and A. H. Mason, A Record of the Expeditions
Against the North-West Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexation of the Pun-
jab (London: Whiting & Co., 1884); India, Army, Intelligence Branch,
Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from India, vol. I: Tribes North of
the Kabul River (Simla: Govt. Monotype Press, 1907); C. E. Callwell,
Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (1896, reprint, London: Printed
for H. M. Stationery Office, by Harrison and Sons, 1906); G. J. Youn-
ghusband, Indian Frontier Warfare (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trub-
ner & Co., 1898); Harold Carmichael Wylly, From the Black Mountain
to Waziristan: Being an Account of the Border Countries and the More
Turbulent of the Tribes Controlled by the North-West Frontier Province,
and of Our Military Relations with Them in the Past (London: Macmil-
lan and Co., 1912); Army Headquarters, Frontier Warfare: 1901 (Simla:
Superintendent Government Printing, 1901).
4 I take culture to refer to shared and dynamic modes of understanding.
There is a wealth of literature on the cultural turn in the humanities.
For a useful summary of cultural readings of empire, see Catherine Hall
(ed.), Cultures of Empire: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, a Reader (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2000). On culture, orientalism and military analysis, see
Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes
(London: Hurst, 2009), pp. 55–82.
5 Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Gov-
ernment (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), p. 2.
6 On performativity, see Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 2006); Judith Butler, Frames
of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London; New York: Verso, 2009).
7 Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, p. 24.
8 ‘After driving the hillmen from their formidable position at Chokalwat . . .
he pushed on and completed his day’s march as if nothing had happened.
This sort of thing bewildered the Chitralis. They did not understand it.’
See ibid., 80.
9 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds.), Tensions of Empire: Colo-
nial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1997), p. 4.
10 See, for example, R. T. I. Ridgway, Handbooks for the Indian Army:
Pathans (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent Government Printing,
1910); Sir Olaf Kirkpatrick Caroe, The Pathans, 550 B.C.-A.D. 1957
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1958).
11 On the colonial archive and its relationship to imperial rule, see Nicholas
B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 107–23.
12 Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, Preface, p. VII. Indica-
tively, Wylly’s text followed earlier works, including the official histories,
in describing the geographic and ethnographic peculiarities of the frontier
region before detailing specific engagements. This common format sug-
gests the close relationship between military histories and instrumentalist
forms of colonial knowledge.
13 Kaushik Roy, The Army in British India: From Colonial Warfare to Total
War 1857–1947 (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), p. 39.
150 Gavin Rand
14 T. R. Moreman, ‘The British and Indian Armies and North West Frontier
Warfare, 1849–1914’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth His-
tory, vol. 20, no. 1 (January 1992), pp. 35–64; T. R. Moreman, ‘“Small
Wars” and “Imperial Policing”: The British Army and the Theory and
Practice of Colonial Warfare in the British Empire, 1919–1939’, Journal
of Strategic Studies, vol. 19, no. 4 (1996), pp. 105–31; T. R. Moreman,
The Army in India and the Development of Frontier Warfare, 1849–1947
(New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998); Brandon Marsh, Ramparts
of Empire: British Imperialism and India’s Afghan Frontier, 1918–1948
(Houndmills, Basingstoke: AIAA, 2014); Daniel Whittingham, ‘“Sav-
age Warfare”: C. E. Callwell, the Roots of Counter-Insurgency, and the
Nineteenth Century Context’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, vol. 23, nos.
4–5 (October 2012), pp. 591–607; Ian F. W. Beckett, ‘British Counter-
Insurgency: A Historiographical Reflection’, Small Wars & Insurgencies,
vol. 23, nos. 4–5 (2012), pp. 781–98. After the protracted ‘frontier upris-
ing’ of 1897–98, the specificities of frontier warfare received considerable
attention in the military periodicals. See, for example, J. A. H. Pollock,
‘Notes on Hill Warfare’, Journal of the United Services Institution of
India, no. 131 (April 1898), pp. 137–47. The Journal of the United Ser-
vices Institution of India carried multiple articles on the subject in each
of the following eight issues. The subject remained a staple of the Journal
until the 1940s.
15 Government of India, Foreign Department, Report Showing the Relations
of the British Government with the Tribes, Independent and Dependent,
on the North-West Frontier of the Punjab, from Annexation in 1849 to the
Close of 1855. The idea of savage warfare had pan-imperial inputs, and
also reflected imperial engagements in Africa. See, for example, Samuel
White Baker, ‘Experience in Savage Warfare’, The Royal United Services
Institution Journal, vol. 17, no. 75 (1873), pp. 904–21; J. C. Gawler, ‘Brit-
ish Troops and Savage Warfare, with Special Reference to the Kafir Wars’,
The Royal United Services Institution Journal, vol. 17, no. 75 (1873),
pp. 922–39.
16 Paget and Mason, A Record of the Expeditions Against the North-West
Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexation of the Punjab, p. 34.
17 Even in the late 1880s, it was acknowledged that the border region was, in
effect, out of bounds to British officials and troops.
18 For a breakdown of the troops, see Paget and Mason, A Record of the
Expeditions Against the North-West Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexa-
tion of the Punjab, p. 35.
19 Ibid., pp. 39–40.
20 Ibid.
21 Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, pp. 211–25.
22 Paget and Mason, A Record of the Expeditions Against the North-West
Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexation of the Punjab, pp. 50–2.
23 Major General A. T. Wilde, to Quartermaster General, dated 5 Octo-
ber 1868, No. 450. National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi: Foreign
Department Proceedings, Political A, October 1868, 404–496.
24 Paget and Mason, A Record of the Expeditions Against the North-West
Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexation of the Punjab, p. 54.
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 151
25 Paget and Mason, A Record of the Expeditions Against the North-West
Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexation of the Punjab, pp. 54–5.
26 Paget and Mason, A Record of the Expeditions Against the North-West
Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexation of the Punjab, p. 59.
27 Colonel A. Broome, Offg. Secy. to Govt. of India, Military Dept., with
G.G. to Lieutenant-Colonel P.S. Lumsden, Quartermaster General,
No. 206, dated 10th October 1868, No. 460, NAI: Foreign Department
Proceedings, Political A, October 1868, 404–496.
28 India, Army, Intelligence Branch, Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from
India, vol. I: Tribes North of the Kabul River, pp. 144–5.
29 See Enclosure No. 24, From Officiating Secretary to the Government
of Punjab, to the Secretary to Government of India, dated Simla, 30th
July 1888 in Papers Relating to the Expedition against Certain Tribes
Inhabiting the Black Mountain, Parliamentary Papers, 1888 [C.5561],
139.
30 See No. 163, Letter from Government of India to Secretary of State, dated
24 September 1888 in Papers Relating to the Expedition against Cer-
tain Tribes Inhabiting the Black Mountain, Parliamentary Papers, 1888
[C.5561], 3.
31 India, Army, Intelligence Branch, Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from
India, vol. I: Tribes North of the Kabul River, p. 145.
32 C. L. Tupper, Secretary to Government Punjab to H.M. Durand, Secretary
to Government of India, Foreign Department, dated Lahore, 16 Novem-
ber 1888, No. 96, NAI: Foreign Department Proceedings, Frontier A,
December 1888, No. 27–101.
33 The ‘Hindustani Fanatics’ were a group of émigré Muslims – most of
whom originated from British India – who established a colony on the
frontier in the 1820s. Having initially contested Sikh rule, the group were
subsequently implicated in a largely implausible anti-colonial ‘Wahabi
conspiracy’. The Indian Army engaged members of the colony on several
occasions but, by the 1880s, the group was viewed as an irritant rather
than as a serious threat to the colonial order. For a contemporary mil-
itary account, see Report on the Hindustani Fanatics, Compiled in the
Intelligence Branch, Quartermaster General’s Department, by Lieutenant
Colonel A.H. Mason, (Simla, 1895). IOR: L/MIL/17/13/18. For an excel-
lent critical history, see Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan
Frontier, pp. 75–100. The ‘Hindustani fanatics’ had opposed the British in
many of their previous operations on the Hazara border, and it is signifi-
cant that during both the 1888 and 1891 expeditions, the only opponent
forces to attempt a decisive engagement were the so-called fanatics. It is
possible, as David Edwards has argued, that the ‘deeper, cultural threat
that the colonial vision of progress and civilization represented’ to such
groups produced a particularly virulent opposition. David B. Edwards,
Heroes of the Age Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), pp. 2, 30. Alternatively, it may be
that military support for the tribesmen was negotiated in return for the
tribe’s residence at Sitanna. See Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the
Afghan Frontier, p. 241. fn. 48. See also Note No. 576, From the Offici-
ating Secretary to the Government of Punjab, to the Commissioner and
152 Gavin Rand
Superintendent, Peshawar Division, dated 25th September, 1888, K.W.
No. 3, NAI: Foreign Department Proceedings, Frontier A, December 1888,
27–101. India, Army, Intelligence Branch, Frontier and Overseas Expedi-
tions from India, vol. I: Tribes North of the Kabul River, p. 150.
34 No. 101, Field Operations, 4th Column, Hazara Field Force, Major-Gen-
eral W. Galbraith, Comdg. 2nd Brigade, Hazara Field Force to The Major-
General Commanding Hazara Field Force. No. 389, p. 206, India Office
Records (IOR), British Library, London: L/MIL/17/13/75.
35 No. 101, Field Operations, 4th Column, Hazara Field Force, Major-Gen-
eral W. Galbraith, Comdg. 2nd Brigade, Hazara Field Force to The Major-
General Commanding Hazara Field Force. No. 389, pp. 207–8, IOR: L/
MIL/17/13/75.
36 ‘Report of the Operations of the Hazara Field Force’, No. 191-F-C,
dated Headquarters, Lala Musa, 27 November 1888 to The Secretary to
the Government of India, Military Department. No. 384, p. 2, IOR: L/
MIL/17/13/75.
37 Telegram No 22-B, dated 8 October 1888. From the General Officer Com-
manding 2nd Brigade, Hazara Field Force to The Adjutant-General in
India, No. 222, p. 84, IOR: L/MIL/17/13/75.
38 ‘Report of the Operations of the Hazara Field Force’, Maj-Genl. J. W.
McQueen, C.B., A.D.C., Comdg. Hazara to the Adjutant General in
India, Dated Abbottabad, 19 November 1888, No. 384, p. 7. IOR: L/
MIL/17/13/75.
39 Hugh Lewis Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier (London:
John Murray, 1912), p. 100.
40 ‘Preliminary report by the Punjab Government of the progress of the Mili-
tary operations against the tribes of the Black Mountain and their political
results’. No. 706, dated Lahore, 16 November 1888. From C. L. Tup-
per, Esq., Secretary to Government of Punjab and its Dependencies, to
The Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, No. 391,
p. 215, IOR: L/MIL/17/13/75.
41 Expedition Against the Black Mountain Tribes by a Force Under
Major-General J.W. McQueen, C.B., A.D.C., in 1888, p. 30. IOR: L/
MIL/17/13/52. Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier, p. 102.
42 See C. L. Tupper, Secretary to Government Punjab to H.M. Durand, Sec-
retary to Government of India, Foreign Department’, dated Lahore, 16
November 1888’, No. 96, pp. 5–6, NAI: Foreign Department Proceedings,
Frontier A, December 1888, No. 27–101.
43 ‘Report of the Operations of the Hazara Field Force’, Appendix E:
No. 5330-P, dated Abbottabad, 17 November 1888, From: Colonel E.
L. Ommaney, Chief Political Officer, Hazara Field Force, to Maj-Genl, J.
W. McQueen, C.B., A-D-C, Comdg. Hazara Field Force, No. 384, p. 45.
IOR: L/MIL/17/13/75.
44 The Commander-in-Chief had issued strict instructions to McQueen, who
led the operation, that the exercise was ‘merely intended to prove our right
under the treaty to march along the crest, and [was] not intended to develop
under any circumstances into a large expedition’. Expedition Against the
Hassanzai and Akazai Tribes of the Black Mountain, by a Force Under the
Command of Major-General W.K. Elles, C.B., in 1891 (Simla: Government
Central Printing Office, 1894) p. 4, IOR: L/MIL/17/13/53.
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 153
45 Major-General W. K. Elles, C.B., late commanding the Hazara Field Force,
to the Adjutant-General in India, No. 305-H, dated Murree, 22 June 1891,
p. 3. NAI: Foreign Department Proceedings, Frontier B, July 1892, No. 6.
46 Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, p. 110.
47 See, for example, Paget and Mason, A Record of the Expeditions Against
the North-West Frontier Tribes, Since the Annexation of the Punjab,
p. 506.
48 Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, p. 425.
49 Ibid, p. 426.
50 Brigadier General N. Chamberlain, C.B., to Major G. Hutchinson, Mili-
tary Secretary to the Punjab Government No. 852, dated Sheikh Bodeen,
Dera Ismail Khan District, the 7th July 1860, No. 100, p. 6, NAI: Foreign
Department Proceedings, Political A, November 1862, 99–101; see also
India, Army, Intelligence Branch, Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from
India, vol. I: Tribes North of the Kabul River, p. 366.
51 Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, p. 449. Wylly’s account is
largely reproduced from Report on the Mahsud Waziri Tribe, Compiled in
the Intelligence Branch, Quarter Master General’s Department by Captain
A.H. Mason, D.S.O., Deputy Assistant Quarter Master General (Simla:
Government Central Printing Office, 1893), p. 39, IOR: L/PS/20/B104.
52 Brigadier General N. Chamberlain, C.B., to Major G. Hutchinson, Mili-
tary Secretary to the Punjab Government, No. 852, dated Sheikh Bodeen,
Dera Ismail Khan District, the 7th July 1860, No. 100, p. 9, NAI: Foreign
Department Proceedings, Political A, November 1862, 99–101.
53 Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, p. 452.
54 Mason, Report on the Mahsud Waziri Tribe: By Cpt A H Mason, Deputy
Assistant Quarter Master General Simla: Intelligence Branch, Quarter
Master General’s Dept, 1893, p. 40.
55 Ironically, perhaps, Temple is best known for his parsimonious adminis-
tration of relief during the Madras famine. See Mike Davis, Late Victorian
Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (Lon-
don; New York: Verso, 2002), pp. 36–43.
56 Brigadier General N. Chamberlain, C.B., to Major G. Hutchinson, Mili-
tary Secretary to the Punjab Government, No. 852, dated Sheikh Bodeen,
Dera Ismail Khan District, the 7th July 1860, No. 100, p. 22, NAI: For-
eign Department Proceedings, Political A, November 1862, 99–101. Simi-
lar readings were processed into early colonial historiography: see, for
example, Charles Rathbone Low, Soldiers of the Victorian Age, vol. II
(London: Chapman, 1880), pp. 402–3.
57 Lieutenant Colonel H. B. Lumsden C.B., Commanding Detachment to
Captain Graydon, Staff Officer. Punjab Irregular Force, Camp Puloseen,
25 April 1860, No. 100, p. 22, NAI: Foreign Department Proceedings,
Political A, November 1862, 99–101.
58 Military Department, No. 43, February 1881, No. 2, dated Lahore, 3rd
January 1881. W. M. Young, Esq., Secretary to the Government of the
Punjab to the Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department
pp. 8–9, IOR: L/MIL/17/13/107.
59 The punishment was ‘held over’ because much of the Indian Army was
already deployed in Afghanistan, a fact which may further evidence the
strategic context for, and logic of, tribal calculations. Letter No. 1575,
154 Gavin Rand
dated Lahore, 13 April 1881. From Colonel S. Black, Secretary to Govern-
ment of the Punjab, Military Department to The Brigadier Commanding
Mahsud-Waziri Expeditionary Force’, p. 47, IOR, L/MIL/17/13/107.
60 The Mahsud-Waziri Expedition of 1881, Diaries of Officers of the Quar-
termaster General’s Department in India attached to the Mahsud-Waziri
Expeditionary Force, p. 83, (Simla: Government Central Press, 1884),
IOR: L/MIL/17/13/107.
61 For a wider discussion of the relationship between cartography and impe-
rial expansion in South Asia, see Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire:
The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1997).
62 ‘The Lessons of the Waziri Expedition’, Pioneer, 20 June 1881. Reprinted
in: The Mahsud-Waziri Expedition of 1881, Diaries of Officers of the
Quartermaster General’s Department in India attached to the Mahsud-
Waziri Expeditionary Force (Simla: Government Central Press, 1884)
p. 94, IOR: L/MIL/17/13/107.
63 No. 1526a. Memorandum, Submitted for the information of the Govern-
ment of India, with reference to Military Department, No. 10300K dated
7th May 1881, NAI: Foreign Department Proceedings, Political B,
August 1881, Nos. 138–9.
64 Letter from the Punjab Government, No 61 dated Lahore 23rd Feb-
ruary 1882, From W. M. Young Secretary to the Government of Pun-
jab to C. Grant, CSI, Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign
Department, No. 8, NAI: Foreign Department Proceedings, Political A,
July 1882, 8–40.
65 Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier, p. 92.
66 For a detailed breakdown of the attackers and casualties (which shows
that they were from a variety of sections), see Operations Against the
Mahsud-Wazirs by a Force Under the Command of Lieutenant-General
Sir W.S.A. Lockhart, K.C.B., C.S.I. in 1894–95, p. 24 IOR: L/MIL/17/
13/108.
67 Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, p. 465.
68 See Sir Evelyn Berkeley Howell, Mizh: A Monograph on Government’s
Relations with the Mahsud Tribe (Simla: Government of India Press,
1931), p. 9, IOR: V/27/273/3.
69 Operations Against the Mahsud-Wazirs by a force under the command of
Lieutenant-General Sir W.S.A. Lockhart, K.C.B., C.S.I. in 1894–95, p. 36,
IOR: L/MIL/17/13/108.
70 Ibid, p. 46.
71 Ibid, p. 62.
72 See Sameetah Agha’s illuminating reading of the ‘Maizar’ incident in this
volume.
73 Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, p. 474.
74 As Randolf Cooper has noted, the strategic logic of those who opposed
colonial forces has often obscured by the ‘historiographic control’ exerted
by those who constructed the first histories. See Randolf G. S. Cooper,
‘Culture, Combat, and Colonialism in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Cen-
tury India’, The International History Review, vol. 27, no. 3 (Septem-
ber 2005), p. 546.
75 Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, pp. 71–83.
 From the Black Mountain to Waziristan 155
76 See, for example, the emphasis given to the ‘natural difficulties of the
country’ in the Intelligence Branch history of the operations: Expedition
Against the Black Mountain Tribes by a Force Under Major-General J.W.
McQueen, C.B., A.D.C., in 1888, IOR: L/MIL/17/13/52.
77 Older accounts include Daniel R. Headrick, ‘The Tools of Imperial-
ism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial Empires in
the Nineteenth Century’, The Journal of Modern History, vol. 51, no. 2
(1979), pp. 231–63; on the frontier specifically, see T. R. Moreman, ‘The
Arms Trade and the North West Frontier Pathan Tribes, 1890–1914’,
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 22, no. 2
(May 1994), pp. 187–216; elsewhere, see Chris Vaughan, ‘“Demon-
strating the Machine Guns”: Rebellion, Violence and State Formation
in Early Colonial Darfur’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, vol. 42, no. 2 (15 March 2014), pp. 286–307; also Kim. A
Wagner, ‘A Scattering of Death: Violence and the rule of colonial dif-
ference in early British counter-insurgency’, History Workshop Journal,
forthcoming, 2018.
78 See, for example, Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1988), pp. 128–31.
79 G. Pandey, ‘A View of the Observable: A Positivist understanding of
Agrarian Society and Political Protest in Colonial India’, Journal of Peas-
ant Studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (1980), pp. 375–83.
80 See, for example, Rob Johnson’s thoroughly researched The Afghan Way
of War, which claims, inter alia, that Pashtuns and Britons thought about
warfare and honour in similar ways, and that negotiation was an inte-
gral part of Pashtun culture. While textual support for these claims can
be found in the colonial sources, they reflect the ‘counter-insurgent code’
described by Ranajit Guha. Robert Johnson, The Afghan Way of War:
Culture and Pragmatism (London: Hurst, 2011), pp. 7–8, 36; Ranajit
Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency’, in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford; New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 45–84.
81 As Patrick Porter has suggested, military praxis – at strategic and tactical
levels – is shaped by a reciprocal and dynamic exchange which is inherent
to combat. See Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 65.
82 Where Callwell proposed revisions to extant practices, his recommenda-
tions often invoked the specificities of ‘savage’ culture. Callwell objected
to ‘burn and scuttle’ operations because he believed that the inevitable
retreat of colonial forces encouraged ‘truculent highlanders . . . [to] think
that they have got the best of the transaction’. Callwell, Small Wars: Their
Principles and Practice, p. 301.
83 See, for example, Andrew M. Roe, Waging War in Waziristan: The British
Struggle in the Land of Bin Laden, 1849–1947 (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 2010); Matt Matthews, An Ever Present Danger: A Concise
History of British Military Operations on the North-West Frontier, 1849–
1947 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army
Combined Arms Center, 2010). See, also, the ‘Tribal Analysis Center’,
<www.tribalanalysiscenter.com/Home.html> [accessed May 2016].
84 Whittingham, ‘“Savage Warfare”’, p. 604.
85 For more, see Wagner, ‘A Scattering of Death’.
156 Gavin Rand
86 Though he defined ‘small wars’ to include all campaigns in which adver-
saries possessed ‘palpably inferior’ armament, organization or discipline,
Callwell’s framing reproduces colonial assessments of self/other and thus
replays the hierarchies encoded in such analyses (i.e. it assumes that tech-
nologies, institutions and training are the mark of the modern/advanced
and, by contrast, those lacking these are therefore primitive or, in Call-
well’s own terms, ‘barbaric’). Put simply, it assumes that the reader is a
colonial soldier fighting anti-colonial enemies. Callwell, Small Wars: Their
Principles and Practice, p. 22.
87 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading
the Archives’, History and Theory, vol. 24, no. 3 (1985), pp. 247–72.
7 Deciphering the Maizar
military tribunal, 1897
Civil–military tensions and
Pukhtun resistance on the
North-West Frontier
of British India
Sameetah Agha

The North-West Frontier has been presented as a unique site in the

history of British colonialism. Despite over a hundred bloody confron-
tations fought between 1849 and 1947 – including at least one of the
biggest ‘small wars’ in their military history – the British were unable to
pacify the region or subdue its inhabitants, the Pukhtuns. As has been
considered in recent work by Benjamin Hopkins and Shah Mahmoud
Hanifi, the geography and terrain of nineteenth-century Afghanistan
was known, represented and imagined through the interests and expe-
riences of British imperial expansion.1 In a similar vein, the region
known as the North-West Frontier can be considered a nineteenth-
century imperial creation given form through British expansion in the
region. Today, the North-West Frontier lies in the Federally Adminis-
tered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan and shares a 1,500-mile border
with Afghanistan which has never been fully demarcated.2
The British came into direct contact with the Pukhtuns after the
conquest of Punjab in 1849 and the subsequent annexation of the
trans-frontier districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Dera
Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan. However, British spies had been
active in the region for a few decades before, and the Government
of India’s (hereafter GOI) meddling in the affairs of Afghanistan had
already led to the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839–42.3 The histories
of Afghanistan and the Frontier region are inextricably linked. Pukh-
tun tribes inhabiting the adjacent Frontier region acknowledged the
suzerainty of the Amir of Afghanistan and received allowances from
him while retaining varying degrees of autonomy.
British policy in the North-West Frontier in the nineteenth century
has been interpreted as one of non-interference or close-border policy
158 Sameetah Agha
until 1878 and a more active forward policy from 1880 onwards. The
official axiom underlying both policies was non-annexation.4 However
there was a huge disjuncture between stated policy and actions on the
ground. While the close-border (also known as ‘masterly inactivity’
by its critics) policy claimed non-interference and a desire for peace,
numerous military punitive expeditions were sanctioned against the
tribes and heavy fines imposed on them in this period. In the 1880s
the colonial government became more aggressive while still claiming
non-interference and non-annexation. The Durand Line delineating
spheres of influence between Afghanistan and British India was estab-
lished as the new boundary in 1893. Through the 1890s roads were
opened and military outposts and garrisons established from Zhob to
Chitral. Although the GOI officially maintained that it had no desire
to annex the Frontier and only wanted to foster close and friendly rela-
tions with the tribes, by 1896 George White, Commander-in-Chief,
summed up the forward policy of the last decade candidly, ‘the Gomal
has been traversed by our troops from Domandi to its eastern gate,
and has since been rendered safe by the conquest and occupation of
Waziristan: the Tochi has been annexed and direct communication
opened between it and Bannu.’5 All this time the colonial authori-
ties continued to represent to Whitehall that they in no way desired
annexation.
In 1897, the British were faced with a formidable tribal uprising
on the North-West Frontier. From Waziristan to Malakand, garrisons
were besieged and military outposts attacked. The loss of the Khyber
Pass, seen as the gateway to India, was interpreted as the blackest
day of British history on the Frontier.6 The Undersecretary of State
informed Parliament that preserving control of the area was ‘undoubt-
edly of the very greatest importance to what is known as the prestige
of the Government of India’.7 H. W. Mills, a contemporary author,
declared: ‘The fall of such impregnable fortresses as Ali Musjid and
Landi Kotal, and the securing of the Pass was universally held to be
the worst blow our prestige would suffer on the north-west frontier.’8
It took some 75,000 troops two years to repress the revolt, at a cost
of millions of pounds sterling and over 1,000 casualties.

An incident of ‘treachery’?
The first attack of the revolt occurred on 10 June 1897 in Maizar,
a group of villages in Tochi, North Waziristan.9 The main tribes in
Waziristan are the Wazirs, who are divided into several clans. The
principal clan is Darwesh Khel, its most important subdivision being
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 159
the Utmanzai or Tochi Wazirs, who are further divided into a number
of subsections, the most important being the Madda Khel, the Kabul
Khel and the Tori Khel. According to contemporary accounts, on 10
June 1897, Mr Herbert W. Gee, the British Political Officer stationed
in the Tochi Valley, went to Maizar with a large military escort – 300
men from the 1st Sikhs and 1st Punjab Infantry, two guns of No. 6
Bombay Mountain Battery, and 12 sabres of the 1st Punjab Cavalry.
The maliks (tribal headmen or representatives), through whom the
British dealt with the tribes, showed every sign of friendship, and food
was provided for the officers and soldiers. After the meal, the troops
were resting under some trees and the pipers of the 1st Sikh Regi-
ment started playing music when suddenly the tribes attacked them.
The British had to retreat and suffered heavy casualties. Three British
officers, 22 men of the native ranks and two followers were killed; and
three British officers and 24 men were wounded.10
Gee, who survived the attack, sent a telegram to the British authori-
ties describing the incident as cowardly and treacherous. The troops
were at rest, after lunch, when they were ‘suddenly rushed by a large
body of tribesmen.’11 Another report sent by authorities in Tochi
stated that the cause of such treachery was not clear: ‘The fact that
they attacked a party who had just eaten food with them – contrary to
all Pathan codes of honour – renders the matter additionally hard to
explain.’12 Though puzzled by the incident, Gee was certain in his con-
clusion that the attack was both premeditated and carefully planned.
Laying out Gee’s communications, the Pioneer correspondent summed
up the attack as follows:

The Madda Khel had deliberately planned the attack on Colonel

Bunny’s detachment and had carried it out in the most treacher-
ous way. Their offence was clearly defined and their punishment
needed to be exemplary. A tribal rising of the ordinary kind, or a
raid upon an outpost, is not of material consequence in the bor-
derland. Such disturbances are more or less to be expected when-
ever our troops occupy positions beyond the old frontier line. But
the Maizar affair was of an entirely different complexion, for it
involved a breach of hospitality and could only have been success-
ful by cunningly contrived treachery.13

This version of events became public and widely circulated at the

time. Notwithstanding the ‘treachery’, criticism followed from the
press, as one of the main duties of a Frontier political officer was to
gauge the attitude of the tribesmen. Questions raised by the apparent
160 Sameetah Agha
unpreparedness of Gee and his escort could be explained by character-
izing the attack as so sudden and conniving in nature that they had
been deliberately lulled into a false sense of security. Contemporary
British writers, such as H. W. Mills, emphasized the exceptional nature
of the event:

Correspondents wrote as if the Political Officer and the military

officers with him at Maizar were imbeciles to have trusted the
Madda Khel at all. Yet Colonel Bunny was an officer intimately
acquainted with the Pathan character, thoroughly experienced in
the manners and customs of frontier tribesmen, and generally cau-
tious in his dealing with the tribesmen: but he must have been
deceived by Sadda Khan’s hospitality. . . . It remained for a com-
paratively small section of the Darwesh Khel to break the peace at
Maizar and to signalise its defiance of British authority by a piece
of treachery unequalled on the frontier, and perfidy in setting at
nought the laws of hospitality of a sort revolting even to Afghan
sentiment.14

Implicit within this question lie key features of how the Frontier
encounter was understood and explained. One of the ways in which
contemporaries tried to explain the incident was through evoking
‘fanaticism’, a broad and convenient trope in colonial literature on
the Frontier. By the late nineteenth century ‘fanaticism’ was a widely
deployed Orientalist tool, especially in explaining armed colonial
resistance in predominantly Muslim societies.15 In contemporary colo-
nial accounts the Pukhtuns emerge as savages (bloodthirsty, warlike,
treacherous, fanatical) and/or as a static tribe with fixed codes of hon-
our, shame and revenge. Pukhtunwali is emphasized in colonial and
even in recent anthropological accounts as a fixed and fundamental
code of honour governing Pukhtun society which requires tribes to
show hospitality to all visitors in the form of food, lodging and pro-
tection. In an insightful recent essay, Nancy Lindisfarne has stated
that anthropologists of the Middle East (including Afghanistan) have
ignored issues of class and empire and focused disproportionately on
explorations of difference ‘as construed in exotic, tribal, ethnic, sec-
tarian, cultural and gendered terms’.16 In this case we see contempo-
rary accounts, drawn from Mr Gee’s initial telegrams, describing the
attack as fanaticism, treachery and the violation of Pukhtunwali. Such
Orientalist constructs are devoid of historical context and reinforce
established colonial biases rather than deepening our historical under-
standing of the circumstances and context of the attack.
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 161
Almost all later accounts have fashioned their explanation of the
attack at Maizar from similar elements. For example, C. C. Davies
wrote in 1932: ‘So treacherous was this attack, and so utterly at variance
with the Pathan code of honour, that frontier officers found the great-
est difficulty in ascertaining the exact cause.’17 In conclusion he states:
‘The relative importance of fanaticism, Afghan and other intrigues, and
the feeling of unrest engendered by discontent at tribal allowances, as
causes of the Maizar outrage, will perhaps never be definitely deter-
mined, but it seems certain that the exaggerated reports of this affair,
disseminated by anti-British mullahs, did tend to affect the rest of the
border – to some extent Maizar heralded the approaching storm.’18
This view of the ‘Maizar outrage’ as a sudden and treacherous
attack has held till today.19
However, the known circumstances surrounding the attack raise
further questions: if the object of the visit of Mr Gee and the military
party was to ‘realize’ a fine, then why were the troops dining in the
village and playing music for the benefit of the tribesmen? If the object
was a friendly one, then why did the Political Officer take a big mili-
tary escort with him? Given the presence of such an escort, why were
the officers and troops not better able to defend themselves? Despite
the broad and uncritical acceptance of a premeditated, ‘treacherous’
attack, the circumstances of the incident and the poor British military
performance raised unanswered questions for some commentators.20
A British military historian, H. L. Nevill, was astute enough to note
the apparent contradiction in 1912:

The position taken up by the escort was, tactically speaking,

unsound; the attractions of shady trees for breakfast seem to have
overridden more important considerations. The troops had arrived
in Maizar nominally as an escort to the Political Officer, but prac-
tically to compel the payment of a fine which the tribesmen had
resisted for a long time as, in their opinion, unjust; consequently,
the most hospitable of welcomes was hardly to be expected, and
there must be a reason or motive for a phenomenon or action of
an unnatural kind.21

The military unpreparedness and the motive for taking a large military
escort was also brought out by tactical failure, which was exacerbated
by the fact that the gunners continued to fire blank:

Artillery fire may be ineffective from a variety of causes, but when

the cause is the use of blank, as in the example in question, it is
162 Sameetah Agha
almost certain that, so far from frightening the enemy, the only
result will be to advertise the otherwise possibly unrecognized
fact that the supply of shell is exhausted, or nearly so, and all the
moral effect of the guns – their most valuable asset – will be lost.22

Ironically, and despite the critical commentary of Nevill, the military

failure at Maizar was turned into a heroic feat:23 With bullets raining
upon them and with their British commanders all hors de combat, the
retirement was carried out in the most orderly and admirable fash-
ion.24 The GOI officially endorsed this view. The Commander-in-Chief
of the British Indian Army recorded his appreciation of the heroic con-
duct of officers and men and declared that ‘the action was a deed of
arms second to none in the annals of the British army’.25 The failure
of existing accounts to satisfactorily explain the incident, and particu-
larly the emphasis on the violation of Pukhtun hospitality codes, ulti-
mately reflects a complacent disengagement, even from the full extant
contemporary evidence. Usually when tribes on the North-West Fron-
tier challenged imperial authority, they were sanctioned by the imposi-
tion of fines or blockades or via punitive military expeditions known
as ‘butcher and bolt’ or ‘burn and scuttle’ raids. Immediately after the
Maizar attack a military expedition was sanctioned against the tribes.
However, a remarkable military tribunal was also established to try
the maliks, who had been accused by Mr Gee of having arranged the
attack. The military tribunal, held in the aftermath of the incident,
provides a more detailed account of the events, allowing us a nuanced
reconstruction of the encounter, one that encompasses evidence of
Pukhtun agency and perspectives. Though the existence and operations
of this military tribunal stand out as completely unique in the history
of the North-West Frontier, neither the tribunal nor its findings appear
in contemporary or postcolonial writings. This chapter examines the
previously unexamined circumstances that led to the establishment of
the Maizar tribunal. It reveals a cover-up on the part of the local politi-
cal officers and ensuing tensions in civil–military relations that led to
the facts surrounding the attack surfacing. The chapter reveals that the
Maizar tribunal emerged from a context of civil–military tensions, and
in this case the maliks recognized this fissure within empire and used it
to seek recourse to some element of legality.

Civil–military relations and the establishment

of the Maizar tribunal
Several important studies have furthered our understanding of Vic-
torian civil–military relations, most notably those by Edward Spiers,
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 163
W. S. Hamer, Hew Strachan and Ian Beckett.26 This work examines
tensions within the transforming military establishment, including
civil–military relations in the wake of army reform in Britain, rival-
ries among eminent soldiers of empire (e.g. Wolseley and Roberts,
Wolseley and Mortimer Durand and Curzon and Kitchener) and the
competition for key posts arising from and within the politics of com-
mand. Detailed enquiry into civil–military relations on the North-
West Frontier, pioneered by W. Murray Hogben, has more recently
been developed by Christian Tripodi and Andrew Roe.27 These latter
writers point to two notable sources of strain upon the civil–politi-
cal relationship. Apart from a difference in outlook and rivalry for
recognition and rewards, since the First Afghan War the tendency of
the military establishment in India was to blame the ‘politicals’ for
military disasters. Also important was the problem of divided control
during military expeditions. Political officers being attached to expedi-
tions in order to carry on negotiations with tribes led to resentment of
politicals’ sympathy towards the tribes, perceived as hampering mili-
tary expeditions and standing between the soldier and his medal.28 In
general, the politicals have been viewed as restrained and empathetic
while soldiers have been seen as the impatient and aggressive expan-
sionists. Our present case departs from this paradigm.
Following the attack, based on Gee’s urgings, the GOI sanctioned
a military expedition to punish the tribes. Major-General G. Corrie
Bird was appointed to command the Tochi Field Force, numbering
4,660 troops.29 On the 13th of July Bird issued a proclamation to
the headmen of all sections of the Darwesh Khel living in Northern
Waziristan. Referring to the ‘treacherous and cowardly’ attack of the
Madda Khels, he proclaimed to all concerned that:

I am ordered by the Sarkar to proceed to Maizar with a force suf-

ficiently strong to hold its own against all comers and to compel
obedience to the orders of the Sarkar. And I inform you that it is
my intention to destroy all the fortified kots in Maizar and Sher-
anni, whether resistance be shown or otherwise, and that I shall
remain at Maizar or some convenient spot near to it, for so long
as seems to me and the Government of India desirable. And I fur-
ther inform you that I shall in due course announce the terms of
punishment which the Sarkar may decide to inflict on all those
who were in any way responsible for, or who took part in, the
treacherous attack on the British troops; with whom alone it is my
business to deal. And I warn all others who wish to live in peace
with the Sarkar to refrain from obstructing my force, for, depend
upon it, any further unfriendly acts will be severely dealt with.30
164 Sameetah Agha
On 20 July British troops under Brigadier-General Egerton arrived in
Sheranni and a squadron went on to Maizar. Both places were found
deserted, though a collection of several hundred tribesmen were pre-
sent in the low hills some distance away. With no opponents to fight,
the next several weeks were spent destroying the houses in the vil-
lages of Maizar and Sheranni. The destruction of the tribes’ homes
was completed on 5 August. The same day General Bird issued notices
to all sections of the Madda Khel to come in on 12 August and hear
the further terms of punishment ordered by the Government. The
tribes refused to come in. On 17 August, in the absence of the Madda
Khel, Bird announced the terms of punishment to other sections of
the Darwesh Khel. The terms of the punishment were that the Madda
Khel tribe must come in and make submission, agreeing to surrender
17 maliks, including Sadda Khan, to the Government of India (GOI).
Further, all stolen property was to be returned or in default a fine
determined by the GOI had to be paid by the errant tribesmen. Finally,
fines, totalling some Rs 11,200, were levied on the tribe on account of
their ‘recent misconduct’ – the Maizar attack.31
Sustained Wazir resistance to British occupation is crucial to under-
standing the circumstances and actual history behind the attack. Sev-
eral figures of central significance in our particular context are missing
from the relevant historiography. Before proceeding further some
clarification of their roles is necessary. Malik Sadda Khan was a key
figure in the events surrounding the Maizar attack. Since the British
first entered Tochi two years prior to the attack, he was a close ally
of the British and considered by them to be the leading representative
of the Madda Khel – the head malik. Collaboration was an essential
feature of the British Empire.32 The colonial system in the North-West
Frontier also functioned through a network of translators, informants,
workers, cleaners and levies.33 However, as F. Cooper and A. L. Stoler
have pointed out, it is not clear ‘how those we have assumed were
reliable ‘agents of empire’ – planters, low-level bureaucrats and subor-
dinate members of colonial armies – participated in those ventures’.34
This is especially true in the North-West Frontier, which was the scene
of perpetual resistance and armed conflict.
It is also necessary to point out that prior to the British arrival there
were no headmen or tribal chiefs in Waziristan. In the 1890s, R.I.
Bruce, a disciple of Sir Robert Groves Sandeman’s, wanted to pursue
a forward policy in Waziristan. To pursue this policy Bruce selected
maliks who were given allowances in return for their influence and
control of the rest of the tribe. By 1897, especially in the aftermath of
the Maizar attack, the failure of the maliki system in Waziristan was
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 165
acknowledged pretty universally by the GOI. Since the maliks were
not selected by the full body of the tribe, they failed to represent the
tribe as a whole and turned out to be little more than middlemen or
intermediaries. Our present case illustrates the limits and failure of
this system.
In this case a tension is evident in Sadda Khan’s relationship to both
the British and his fellow tribesmen. There was an ambiguity and tenu-
ousness to Sadda Khan’s position as an ‘ally’. The colonial authori-
ties attempt to create ‘headship’ and use maliks mainly to manage
resistance to expansion in Waziristan. Reward (bribes or allowances
to maliks) and punishment (levying fines) through the maliks can be
viewed as part of an attempt to create colonial authority. However,
there is a sustained challenge to this formation of imperial authority
being developed and normalized. Sadda Khan’s ambitions as a malik,
including his relationships with the British and with rival maliks, were
fundamentally shaped by the ongoing generalized opposition to the
expanding British presence in the area. Despite the colonial interest in
developing maliks as imperial agents, Sadda Khan was largely limited
to mediating between the forces of opposition and empire. Further,
Sadda Khan found himself jostling among competing internal interests
such as those of rival maliks and sub-imperialism. Backed by colonial
interests, Sadda Khan’s claim to ‘headship’ was contested by several
sections of the Madda Khels (Kazhawals, Khojal Khels, Drepilaris,
and Machas) and disputed by rival maliks (Alambe, Shekh Nur and
Pyall were the most prominent of these). Despite tribal opposition to
his claim, the British continued their recognition of Sadda Khan and
conducted their dealings with the Madda Khel through him.
Ghulam Muhammad Khan was the Assistant Political Officer work-
ing for Mr Gee and acted as a further middleman between Gee and
Sadda Khan. From the documents and the findings of the tribunal he
emerges as a bullying figure who used his position within the colonial
hierarchy to coerce and harass the tribesmen. Sadda Khan and other
maliks in their testimonies described Ghulam Muhammad Khan’s
coercive methods during the expanding occupation of Waziristan. For
instance one of the testimonies described Ghulam Muhammad Khan
using troops to break down the doors of the Madda Khels’ granaries
and forcibly taking grain as a way of collecting revenue. It appears
that one of his principal roles is to translate and represent the com-
munications of the tribes to Mr Gee and vice versa. When questioned
on some of these points Ghulam Muhammad Khan could not provide
any evidence to refute the accusations of the tribesmen against him.
After the trial he was transferred out of Tochi.
166 Sameetah Agha
Honda Ram was a Hindu munshi (scribe, clerk) who had been
appointed to the Sheranni post in 1896. His murder and its relation-
ship to the Maizar attack can be understood only within the context of
British expansion and ongoing resistance from the tribes. From 1895
onwards military posts started to be built in Tochi and from then
there was tribal opposition to their establishment. In February and
March 1896 there were ‘riotous demonstrations’ in which the tribes
threatened to turn the munshis out of the posts. According to Sadda
Khan’s testimony before the tribunal, the agitation was mainly because
of discontent around the distribution of allowances and the imposition
on Wazir villages of revenue demands contrary to agreements reached
with the tribes. On 9 June 1896 Honda Ram was murdered by an indi-
vidual named Waris Khan. Immediately after the murder, Waris Khan
fled to the Amir’s territory. Mr Gee inflicted a fine of Rs 2,000 on the
whole tribe and accused seven tribesmen belonging to the Ali Khan
Khel section of having incited him to commit the murder. The accused
men were produced and tried before a jirga (tribal council) by Mr Gee
and acquitted. However, Gee and Ghulam Muhammad Khan still
insisted that the fine be paid, a demand which, in turn, led to a con-
tinuous resistance on the part of the tribes, who viewed the imposition
of fine as lacking any justifiable legal basis. In his testimony before the
tribunal Sadda Khan said he was not sure why Honda Ram was mur-
dered but ‘everybody was glad of the murder, because I had sent for
Honda Ram and I was responsible for him’.35 Sadda Khan explained
that he had arranged for Honda Ram’s appointment to the Sheranni
post, despite Ghulam Muhammad Khan wanting another appointed.
Sadda Khan further explained that, while it had been rumoured that
‘Honda Ram had an intrigue with Waris Khan’s sister’, he himself did
not credit this. Sadda Khan thought that the more credible reason for
the murder was because he was responsible for Honda Ram and the
tribes and other maliks had expressed an objection to having govern-
ment officials in their posts. So, it was understood that the British and
specifically Sadda Khan were responsible for placing Honda Ram in a
position of authority. Ram’s murder may thus be seen as an attack on
the authority of both the colonial state and Malik Sadda Khan. Madda
Khel oral tradition viewed Honda Ram as a spy of the British.36 It
was recounted that he ‘pretended to teach children’, but the actual
reason for his presence in Tochi was to facilitate further occupation.
This oral tradition corresponds with the aforementioned statement of
Sadda Khan.
Soon after the arrival of the military expedition headed by Gen-
eral Bird in Tochi, the GOI decided that political control of the valley
be taken over from the local officers H. A. Anderson (Commissioner
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 167
and Superintendent of Derajat) and Mr Gee (Political Officer, Tochi,
North Waziristan), and be handed over to the General Officer Com-
manding the Tochi Field Force, Major-General Bird. On 9 July Ander-
son handed over the political charge of the Tochi Valley to General
Bird. While in Tochi, General Bird began to receive information about
the attack, some of which contradicted statements made by Gee and
Anderson. Gee had described the attack as cowardly and treacherous.
Far from mitigating on behalf of the tribesmen, as has been expected
of politicals, Gee concluded with certainty that the attack had been
carefully planned beforehand and merited the severest of punish-
ments. In his opinion, the cause of the attack ‘was partly fanatical, but
arranged by Maliks’.37 Of interest, Gee somewhat grudgingly admitted
that the maliks present had saved his assistant Ghulam Muhammad
Khan’s life by taking him down to a tower during the attack. Rather
than escalating the fighting, Sadda Khan and other maliks offered to
come in. Nevertheless, Gee implicated the maliks by maintaining their
foreknowledge and reported to the Government, ‘it is impossible to
explain how such a well-directed fire broke out on all sides, if we
suppose that the affair began accidentally.’38 Anderson supported this
view and reported that the outbreak was inspired by fanaticism. The
Mullahs (Islamic holy men), he claimed, ‘took advantage of Muhar-
ram to rouse fanatical feelings, and the unpalatable demand of the
fine in Honda Ram’s case gave them desired opportunity of stirring up
resistance and bringing about fanatical outbreak’.39
However information from other sources emphasized a differ-
ent explanation of the Tochi attack and directly contradicted Gee’s
report. For example A. J. Grant, Political Officer stationed in Wana
in Southern Waziristan, sent a report to the Government in which he
concluded:

From all sources of information on this side (Mahsud and Darwesh

Khel) the same report is received as to the cause of the Maizar out-
break. It is ascribed to irritation at Government putting a post in
their country with an armed force to enforce payment of the fine
for the murder of Honda Ram. All idea of fanaticism is eschewed.
The Mahsuds and Wana Ahmadzais attach no importance what-
ever to Muharram and hardly know what the name means.40

In fact, as Grant explained, the religious festival of Muharram is cel-

ebrated by Shi’a Muslims and the Wazirs and Mahsuds are Sunni, not
Shi’a, Muslims. Numerous accounts provided by other informants,
tribesmen and levies pointed to additional reasons for the outbreak,
further challenging the narrative of fanaticism provided by Gee and
168 Sameetah Agha
Anderson. For example, Alam Shah, Havildar (Sergeant) of Sheranna
levies, gave the following account:

On the 8th June I and Sadda Khan and Alambe Khan left Datta
Khel for Maizar to make arrangements for the Political Officer’s
visit. We stayed the night at Maizar with Sherin, Khoji Khel. Sadda
Khan with us. The same night Sadda Khan sent for Pyall, but he
pleaded illness and did not come. Sadda Khan killed some sheep,
and I with some other levies prepared food for the sepoys. On the
9th June I went to Drepilare Kot of Modoi to collect charpoys,
but the villagers refused to give them. Modoi is the headman.
He did not himself go to see Sadda Khan. After this Pyall came
to see Sadda Khan and asked why the fauj was coming. Sadda
Khan said, ‘To realise the fine in Honda Ram’s case.’ Pyall said, ‘It
should be decided by Shariyat. If there is any one in my tribe or
in the whole of Maizar who is guilty, we will pay our share of the
fine, but not otherwise. The Muharrir was killed in Sheranna, and
he was made over to you to protect. The relations of the murderer
live in Sheranna and they should pay.’ Sadda Khan said, ‘This is a
baradari matter. A large fine like this ought to be put on the whole
baradari.’ He said, ‘I will kill you or be arrested by the Sarkar and
transported, but I will not pay a fine without due cause.’41

Meanwhile, Malik Sadda Khan wrote letters and petitions to Gee and
Anderson protesting his innocence and asking that he be allowed to
see them and argue his case. A notable feature of Sadda Khan’s cor-
respondence is his mention of self-imposed exile, underscoring the
highly precarious positions maliks attempted to occupy and negotiate
among forces of empire and indigenous resistance. Here Sadda Khan is
willing to stake everything for an opportunity to prove his innocence.
It is likely that his mention of exile was an effort to demonstrate his
sincere willingness to work with the GOI, while also trying to save his
homeland from further destruction. Pukhtun oral accounts refer to the
Maizar attack as ‘the Maizar War’.
Following Bird’s announcement of terms of punishment several mes-
sages were sent to the maliks to come in, but they refused to appear.
On 2 September the messengers brought back the following letter
from Sadda Khan. Translation of the letter is worth quoting at some
length as it provides a rare form of evidence:

Maliks Din Muhammad, Imangul, Mani Khan, Nakkar Khan,

and Rezan Shah sent by you, reached here, and I was informed of
the message that the Government wishes my presence. The reason
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 169
for my non-attendance and distrust is that during the demarcation
of the boundary between the Government of India and the King of
Khorasan, the Amir, I applied for certain terms from Mr Ander-
son, the Commissioner, for the satisfaction of my tribe; the tribe
as well demanded the terms from the said officer. But the officers
in charge of the Tochi Valley did not allow me to make those
demands, and discredited me before my tribe. When the British
troops came to Maizar for the realization of the fine in Honda
Ram’s case, I gave a notice to Mr Gee and Gholam Muhammad
Khan that they should not go to Maizar as the Madda Khels
would not pay the fine, because the Ali Khan Khel section only
was charged with the offence; the murderer of the Hindu was also
an Ali Khan Khel. The rest of the Madda Khel tribe would not
in any case pay the fine, and a fight would surely ensue between
the Government and the Madda Khels. Mr Gee and Ghulam
Muhammad Khan replied that they will see; and if the Madda
Khels are true sons of their mothers, they will fight against Gov-
ernment for a moment. I took Ghulam Muhammad Khan’s beard
and begged him to grant six days’ grace so that I may present
the tribe at Datta Khel. Gholam Muhammad Khan said that he
intended to try the Madda Khels, and that, if they wished to fight
against Government, he would give them a chance, and therefore
a fine is to be realized from them without any proof. Hearing
this I became silent. When the fight between the British troops
and the Madda Khels commenced, I with my three brothers . . .
accompanied Gholam Muhammad Khan and several other Gov-
ernment servants to a hamlet of Sheranni and remained with them
till the fight ceased. Gholam Muhammad Khan forbade me from
going towards the troops, saying that the troops will injure me.
I therefore did not go towards the troops. My two horses were
killed in the fight. The Government officers have charged me with
a treacherous invitation of the Government, and discredited and
distrusted me. . . . When the General intended to come to our
country I sent him my petitions at Bannu praying that the General
may not cause me injury without proof of my guilt, but the Gen-
eral did not consider my case, and treated me like the offenders
and the enemies of Government. Therefore I have lost my hope
and trust upon the Government officers as they trust each other’s
words and do not believe the words of a foreigner.42

By now multiple sources including British officers such as Grant and

local informants such as Havildar Alam Shah and maliks includ-
ing Sadda Khan described a situation that was more complex than,
170 Sameetah Agha
and in places directly contradicted, the initial reports and explana-
tions furnished by Gee and Anderson. Here again, as in other testi-
monies, Sadda Khan is directly claiming that he communicated the
tribes’ grievance and mounting anger at the injustice of being forced
to pay the fine. He also communicated to Gee and Ghulam Muham-
mad Khan not to go to Maizar as a fight was likely. We can see in the
discussion preceding the fighting at Maizar that if what Sadda Khan
alleges is true Mr Gee and Ghulam Muhammad Khan were directly
taunting and coercing Sadda Khan. Further, it is worth noting that the
maliks were well aware that this information was being communi-
cated to Major General Bird.
For three months Bird and his troops waited in Maizar to announce
terms of punishment to the tribes but the Madda Khel maliks and
tribes refused to appear. In October, Bird was asked by the GOI to send
his report on the origin of the outbreak at Maizar. At question was the
extent to which Assistant Political Officer Ghulam Muhammad Khan
and Malik Sadda Khan were aware of the attitude of the Maizarwals
and the probability of their revolt. Bird reported that Sadda Khan was
the most influential malik in Upper Tochi, a British ally and the main
person with whom they had worked since moving into the Tochi in
1895. Considering past record, he concluded, ‘Sadda Khan was really
sincere in his professions of loyalty to Government. He was, of course,
actuated by self-interest; but he was wise enough to see that it was to
his interest to support us, and he did so.’43 Further, he ruled out ‘delib-
erate treachery’ on the part of the maliks in the Maizar attack.

If there had been deliberate intention to commit a treacherous

attack on our troops, it is impossible to believe Sadda Khan and all
his own immediate relations (to say nothing of the Khidder Khel
Maliks and intelligent men like the Levy Havildar Alam Shah)
would not have had some warning of it, and in that case would
have conveyed a warning to the Political Officer; again if they had
meant treachery, they could have easily shot down Mr Gee and his
escort of six cavalry sowars on the way to or from Dotoi; thirdly,
the inhabitants of remote villages, instead of being ready on the
spot to join in the fight, did not come up till they heard the sound
of firing; fourthly, the women and children do not appear to have
been sent away, as is the custom with Pathan tribes when a fight is
coming off; Mr Gee speaks of the women joining in the fight and
throwing stones, and four women are said to have been killed at
Maizar, and nine women and children at Sheranni.44
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 171
Though Major-General Bird vouched for Malik Sadda Khan, and
Political Officer Gee’s account was not deemed credible, Bird did not
(and perhaps could not) challenge Gee directly. By contrast, inconsist-
encies discovered between the prevalent tribal sentiment and Ghulam
Muhammad Khan’s statements caused Bird to question Khan’s capaci-
ties as an Assistant Political Officer. Further, Sadda Khan’s petitions
had accused the Assistant Political Officer of not listening to his warn-
ings that there would be trouble if the few days’ grace in the payment
of the fine were not granted. Bird advocated further inquiry into the
matter.
By now relations between Major-General Bird and officers in the
Punjab Government had notably deteriorated. For example, Anderson
criticized Bird’s handling of the affairs and stated that the maliks had
not come in till now because of the want of confidence in the officers in
the valley. He recommended to the Government that political control
should be restored to the civil authorities and he be given a free hand
to do whatever he can. Again, the maliks duly recognized and sought
advantage from this fissure by communicating with Bird and not Gee
and Anderson. In a letter dated 23 August Sadda Khan and several
other maliks wrote to Bird requesting that they be allowed to prove
their case against the political officers to their face and in front of Bird:

We beg to state that we had expressed our desire and asked you in
several letters to send for the old officers who had laid down terms
with us in the beginning of the delimitation operations, and who
were present in the fight – in which I (Sadda Khan) am charged with
treacherous invitation. It is necessary to send for those officers, so
that we may lay and prove our case against them before you.45

On 31 October, Sadda Khan came in and surrendered to General Bird

on assurance of his life and a fair trial. In August, Bird had recom-
mended for the Government’s consideration the appointment of a spe-
cial tribunal that would conduct the trial of the maliks who had been
accused of complicity in the Maizar attack. The GOI approved the
formation of the tribunal. Over the next few days Sadda Khan gave his
testimony to Bird and the other officers, with the formal trial sched-
uled for December. Anderson wrote to the Government of Punjab that
he was opposed to a trial because then:

it will not be possible, as I brought to the notice of His Honour in

a demi-official in July last, to establish against him (Sadda Khan) a
172 Sameetah Agha
charge of having organized the outbreak or taken an active part in
the attack. This being so the result of Sadda Khan’s trial conducted
by a tribunal, such as is contemplated, will be that Sadda Khan
will be pronounced not guilty of any serious criminal offence, and
in view of the result of his formal trial will claim to be reinstated
in his former position.46

Anderson again disagreed with the recommendations General Bird

proposed to the GOI. In contrast to Bird, Anderson remained intent
on Sadda Khan’s disposal and opposed to a trial being held to estab-
lish the causes of the outbreak and who was responsible. The GOI
turned down Anderson’s recommendation that political control be
restored to the political officers and maintained that the trial go ahead
as planned. In a detailed response, General Bird communicated his
relief to the GOI that he was not going to be disturbed in his political
charge as long as he and his troops remained in Tochi. The prospect
had caused him anxiety, he explained, because he felt he was on the
verge of success in getting the maliks to come in and if Anderson or
Ghulam Muhammad Khan appeared, or it was rumoured that they
were coming, he felt that he would fail. Rather pointedly he continued:

Without wishing to doubt Mr Anderson’s power of coercing the

Madda Khels, I do not think from what I gather that either he or
Ghulam Muhammad could do more than I was confident in time
I could do myself. . . . I was first rather taken aback at the unwill-
ingness of Sadda Khan to give even a half-way reply to the friendly
deputations I sent him, and at the inability of these deputations to
get out of him what he was really driving at. However, I under-
stood it at last when I ascertained that it was not the object of the
members of these deputations, nor yet of Ghulam Muhammad &
Co., to get him in, but rather to frighten him and keep him out.47

Bird’s letter made clear that it was because of a lack of trust in and fear
of the political officers that the maliks had held out so long.
In November, Sadda Khan and several other Madda Khel maliks
gave two petitions to General Bird asking that they be forwarded to
the Viceroy/Governor-General of India. In these they stated that they
had come to trust General Bird and wished him not only to settle the
Maizar case, but that future control of Tochi should be taken away
from the political officers and placed under General Bird: ‘We most
humbly and respectfully pray that General Bird may be invested with
full power to finally settle the Maizar case. The reason for this petition
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 173
is that we, Malik Sadda Khan and all the Madda Khel tribe, have come
in to submit in reliance on, and trust in, General Bird.’48 Another peti-
tion signed by 39 members of different clans from Tochi addressed to
General Bird requesting that it be forwarded to the Viceroy and the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab stated: ‘We are willing that the
Tochi Valley may remain for the future under the General. In case a
Civil Officer is appointed, still the supreme control should be held by
the General so that we may not be destroyed. We are much pleased
with the dealings of the General.’49 Being aware of the friction between
General Bird and the political officers, the Government interpreted in
these petitions an attempt by the maliks to pit the military against the
civil authorities. E. H. S. Clarke, the assistant secretary, noted: ‘All the
petitions are so manifestly an attempt to play off the General against
the civil political authorities that they require careful dealing with.’50
On 1 December 1897, a tribunal composed of three military officers
and one political officer – General Bird, C. C. Egerton, J. A. H. Pollock
and R. E. Younghusband – tried Sadda Khan and four others who had
been accused of complicity in the Maizar attack – Sheikh Nur, Ware
Khan, Khanijan and Dande.51 The tribunal recorded their testimony,
cross-examined them and also brought in various witnesses. Ghulam
Muhammad Khan was brought in for further questioning. Mr Gee did
not appear but sent in his replies in writing.
Accounts from Sadda Khan, the other maliks and witnesses includ-
ing British informants shed an important light on the Maizar affair.
Testimonies from the tribunal provide insights into the complex
workings of British imperialism on the North-West Frontier, includ-
ing first-hand Pukhtun accounts of the realities of, and resistance to,
imperialism in Waziristan.52 This evidence helps contextualize an oth-
erwise disjointed encounter between ongoing forms of resistance and
received historical narratives of isolated events and attacks viewed as
‘outrages’. Attention to these detailed contrasts offers an alternative
to contemporary perceptions conveyed by local officers to the GOI.
The view that the Wazirs wanted to come into the fold of the Brit-
ish Government, especially as fostered by R. I. Bruce and Anderson,
who had urged the forward policy upon the GOI and the pacifica-
tion of Waziristan in 1894, was challenged by the maliks’ testimonies
that there had never been an agreement to occupation. Rather, it was
explained that an agreement had been made to allow the British to
have a road through Tochi on the strict condition that the tribes would
not be asked to pay revenue. Sadda Khan noted that the tribes sought
written sanads (deeds) embodying these conditions, which were never
granted. Against the terms of the understood agreement, villages in the
174 Sameetah Agha
Dawar were assessed for revenue. People became disgruntled and the
inhabitants of the Spulga village ran away to escape from the revenue
collection. It was pointed out that ‘Ghulam Muhammad then had the
doors of their houses broken open and the grain taken out to pay
the revenue’.53 Not only was the fact of British occupation called into
question in the abstract, but the coherence of the form, logic and rules
that this occupation presented was being contested. One resonant
example described troops forcibly taking grass and fruit from trees
without compensating the villagers. This was during the occupation
prior to the expedition.
The following scenario emerged from Sadda Khan’s and the other
prisoners’ testimonies. First, the Madda Khels had been continuously
pressed to pay a fine which they in turn regarded as unlawful and
unjust. Honda Ram’s murderer had escaped into the Amir’s territory.
The men accused of being his accomplices were tried and acquitted by
a jirga. However, Mr Gee and his assistant continued to demand the
fine without an explanation. Second, on the eve of the attack, Mr Gee
and Ghulam Muhammad Khan ordered Sadda Khan to go prepare
food for the following day as they were coming with several hundred
troops to collect the fine from the tribe. Sadda Khan pleaded for them
not to come and as a last resort asked them to wait. They ignored his
pleas. So, neither Sadda Khan nor the tribe in question had offered
them an invitation, hospitality or protection. Thus the violation of the
code of honour subsequently played up in the press and uncritically
absorbed by the historiography was not accurate.
Finally, as to how the attack commenced? After the troops had
eaten and the pipers were playing music, which is odd given that they
were doing so while their presence was a display of force intended to
coerce payment of a contested fine, the situation suddenly turned for
worse.54 Mr Gee told Sadda Khan and two other maliks to go col-
lect the fine. The maliks pleaded with Gee for six days’ grace which
was not granted, and in response to which Ghulam Muhammad Khan
made some bullying remarks. Thereupon the villagers started mov-
ing away for fear of being arrested. A shot was fired at Sadda Khan
since he was seen as an ally of the British and the villagers were angry
with him about the fine. Then cross-firing started and Sadda Khan
along with Ghulam Muhammad Khan and other maliks took cover
and helped to save Ghulam Muhammad Khan’s life.
According to the tribunal Ghulam Muhammad Khan’s evidence was
given in ‘a most unsatisfactory manner, and he pleaded ignorance of
facts and of having forgotten material points which should have been
indelibly stamped in his memory’.55 Mr Gee failed to appear before
the tribunal, claiming that he was unwell. His rather sullen replies
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 175
were sent in writing, and he did not, or could not, answer the ques-
tions posed to him. Neither Gee nor Ghulam Muhammad Khan could
effectively refute the other testimonies.

Conclusion
The tribunal established clearly that the Maizar attack was not a pre-
meditated act of treachery. Sadda Khan was exonerated of ‘any guilty
complicity or knowledge of the intentions of the tribe to attack our
troops’.56 Following the tribunal, the Government of Punjab and the
GOI acknowledged that there was nothing in the attack that could be
characterised as treachery. Though fanaticism had long since been dis-
missed as an explanation within the imperial government, it has contin-
ued to resonate in much of the contemporary and secondary literature.
The establishment of the Maizar tribunal led to facts around the
Maizar attack emerging, which ran counter to the narrative provided
by Mr Gee and his assistant. It also led to a scrutiny of their role
in Tochi and subsequently an awkward and unsuccessful attempt on
their part to conceal the discontent of the maliks and the resistance
of the tribes, not only to an unjust fine lacking legal basis but to the
nature of British occupation of Waziristan. This fairly anomalous tri-
bunal took place mainly because of the recommendation from General
Bird, whose sustained enquiry into the attack led to strained relations
with the political officers. One is led to question Bird’s motive in rec-
ommending a trial to the GOI. Is it because of his commitment to jus-
tice, because he was aware that the tribes had been wronged and there
had been a misrepresentation of what had actually occurred by the
political officers? The trial did lead to revealing these details. Or was it
that General Bird acquiesced to Sadda Khan and the maliks’ demand
for a fair trial, without the assurance of which they would not have
surrendered? The latter would have implied a failure of General Bird’s
expedition. The archival records do not hold papers that shed direct
light on this, but it is clear that Bird’s actions did lead to uncovering
the facts that implicated Gee and his assistant. General Bird did not
advocate punishment for the maliks who were tried and recommended
that Sadda Khan be reinstituted to his old position along with restored
allowances. Again in contrast to the idea of the ‘sympathetic politi-
cal officer’, Anderson pushed for harsh punishment and despite Sadda
Khan and others being exonerated they were sentenced to indefinite
detention at the pleasure of Government.
If it is the case that the lasting British military presence on the North-
West Frontier brought endemic struggles over forms of accountability
and authority, this historical reality remains difficult to reconstruct
176 Sameetah Agha
satisfactorily. The findings of this unusual military tribunal reveal a
conjuncture of imperial tensions, civil–military relations and Pukhtun
resistance that often remains inaccessible, but has too seldom been
sought out. In the case of the outbreak at Maizar, reports from the
ground were critically evaluated at length, discovered to be disin-
genuous and substituted with a fuller record. These realities of Brit-
ish occupation in Waziristan clearly show us the limitations of a neat
dichotomy of the liberal, sympathetic political officer and the conserv-
ative, aggressive, expansionist soldier. They also raise piercing ques-
tions about the roles and actions of local political officers within the
actual character of imperial expansion and annexation experienced on
the North-West Frontier.
Going beyond Orientalist stereotypes and still prevailing images,
such as ‘fanaticism’ and ‘treachery’, reveals a more complex reality of
imperial warfare on the North-West Frontier. In a recent book Rich-
ard Gott has brought together a comprehensive account of resistance
to colonialism in different parts of the British Empire from 1772 to
1858. He points out that the expansion of the British Empire was
invariably conducted as a military operation which in turn was met
with opposition, off and on, in varying forms until independence. Of
relevance here is his statement: ‘Underneath the veneer of the official
record exists another, rather different, story. Year in, year out, there
was resistance to conquest, and rebellion against occupation, often
followed by mutiny and revolt – by individuals, groups, armies and
entire peoples.’57 To understand the circumstances behind the Maizar
attack we have to go back to the beginning of British occupation of
Waziristan, which encountered a continual resistance from the Wazirs.
The Maizar attack represents a culmination of this resistance.58
The murky and contested nature of the occupation and the history
of sub-imperialism on the Frontier were revealed by the tribunal. One
of the central features in this case was the misrepresentation of the
attitude of the Pukhtuns by the men on the spot – the political offic-
ers – to the GOI, which then in turn got communicated to London. It
was these political officers that had pushed the government towards
annexation of Waziristan saying that the tribes welcomed the British
presence. The resentment of the tribes to the occupation which led to
‘incidents’ was brushed off each time as the work of a few troublemak-
ers, such as was seen with the murder of Honda Ram. In turn inces-
sant fines were placed on the tribes for making trouble, which further
alienated the tribes and led to mounting opposition manifested over
time in violent protest.
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 177
If the expansion of the British Empire was ‘invariably conducted
as a military operation’, then colonial military history, such as the
New Military History, opens up a space to help us understand the
wider histories of empire. This case demonstrates the sub-imperialism
of colonial expansion in the Frontier which has at its heart a story
of resistance that is largely missing from historiography. However, as
Cooper and Stoler state in Tensions of Empire:

The idea of an indigenous ‘response’ or ‘resistance’ to an impe-

rialist initiative . . . does not capture the dynamics of either side
of the encounter or how those sides were drawn. The ambiguous
lines that divided engagement from appropriation, deflection from
denial, and desire from discipline not only confounded that colo-
nial encounter, it positioned contestation over the very categories
of ruler and ruled at the heart of colonial politics.59

The colonial military archive can be a valuable source as can be evi-

denced by the proceedings of the military tribunal. Approaching and
reading the archive in order to prise out some of these ambiguities and
contestations lead us to uncover sub-imperialism (in this case civil–mil-
itary tensions) and resistance as brought out in Pukhtun testimonies,
and towards reconstructing the actual complex range of dynamics that
lie at the heart of the colonial encounter in the North-West Frontier.

Notes
1 Benjamin Hopkins, The Making of Modern Afghanistan (New York: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2008); Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Connecting Histories in
Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Fron-
tier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).
2 FATA, viewed as a semi-autonomous area (especially the political agen-
cies), is comprised of seven political agencies and six Frontier regions. The
political agencies include Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram,
North Waziristan, and South Waziristan and the Frontier regions Pesha-
war, Kohat, Bannu, Tank, Dera Ismail Khan, and Lakki Marwat.
3 Most notable among these spies were Mountstuart Elphinstone and Alex-
ander Burnes.
4 The GOI persuaded London to accept the policy shift in Waziristan,
emphatically refusing its annexation: ‘We wish it to be clearly understood
that nothing is further from our intentions than the annexation of tribal
country on our frontier.’ Nevertheless, the policy was aimed at bringing
the Wazirs under British influence ‘without annexation and without inter-
ference in the internal affairs of the tribes.’ From GOI to the Secretary of
State, 3 January 1894, Proceedings of the Government of India (hereafter
178 Sameetah Agha
PGOI), Secret Foreign (hereafter Sec F), K. W., April 1894, National
Archives of India (hereafter NAI), New Delhi, India.
5 G. S. White, Administration of the Frontier Districts of the Punjab and
the Management of the Trans-Frontier Tribes, 15 June 1896, PGOI, Sec F,
August 1896, NAI, Delhi, India.
6 See Sameetah Agha, ‘Sub-imperialism and the Loss of the Khyber: The
Politics of Imperial Defence on British India’s North-West Frontier’,
Indian Historical Review, vol. 40, no. 2 (2013), pp. 307–30.
7 The Under Secretary of State for India, 7 March 1898, Parliamentary
Debates, House of Lords, 1898.
8 H. W. Mills, The Pathan Revolt in North-West India (Lahore: Civil and
Military Gazette, 1897), p. 108.
9 Official accounts and contemporary historiography were uncertain about
the relationship between the Maizar attack and the revolt that soon broke
out in the rest of the Frontier – whether it was a ‘bastard preliminary’ or
whether it ‘heralded the coming storm’. See C. C. Davies cited below.
10 Most accounts are drawn from Mr Gee’s initial telegrams describing the
attack. From Political Officer to Simla and Punjab, 10 June 1897, PGOI,
Foreign Frontier (hereafter FF), June 1897, NAI, Delhi, India.
11 The Risings on the North-West Frontier (Compiled from the Special War
Correspondence of the Pioneer) (Allahabad: Pioneer, 1898), p. 3.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., p. 23.
14 Mills, Pathan Revolt, p. 23.
15 Orientalist is used here in the Saidian sense. Of particular relevance is
Edward Said’s forceful examination of how recurring, derogatory images
of the ‘other’ perform crucial work in shaping colonial history and histo-
riography. In military encounters on the frontier ‘fanaticism’ was widely
repeated, though remaining mysterious, ‘closed, self-evident, self-con-
firming’ (Mutman, cited here), without an apparent need to be explained.
Military history has yet to fully engage with the postcolonial historio-
graphical challenges outlined in Orientalism. While Patrick Porter’s book
on Military Orientalism is a foray in this direction, the full implications
of Orientalism’s challenge to dominant and lingering colonial narratives
of military history have yet to be explored. Notably, though J. Belich does
not directly employ Orientalism, his work forms an outstanding example
of a history of colonial warfare written from a postcolonial perspective,
very compatible with the aims of Said’s critique. See Edward Said, Orien-
talism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Edward Said, Covering Islam
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1981); Mahmut Mutman, ‘Under the Sign
of Orientalism: The West vs. Islam’, Cultural Critique, no. 23 (Winter
1992–3), pp. 165–97; Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War
Through Western Eyes (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009);
James Belich, The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict: The Maori,
the British and the New Zealand Wars (Montreal; London: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 1989). See also Julia Terrau’s review of Patrick
Porter at: <www.academia.edu/1968659/Book_Review_Patrick_Porter_
Military_orientalism_eastern_war_through_western_eyes> [accessed 22
October 2014].
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 179
16 Nancy Lindisfarne, ‘Exceptional Pashtuns? Class Politics, Imperialism and
Historiography’, in B. D. Hopkins and M. Marsden (eds.), Beyond Swat:
History, Society and Economy Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. 119–33.
17 C. C. Davies, The Problem of the North-West Frontier, 1890–1908, with
a Survey of Policy Since 1849 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1932), p. 93.
18 Ibid., p. 94.
19 This view resonates throughout the secondary literature across the spec-
trum, ranging from popular histories to the more scholarly. For exam-
ples of a caricaturised version see Jules Stewart, The Savage Border: The
History of the North-West Frontier (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing
Limited, 2007) and D.S. Richards, The Savage Frontier: A History of the
Anglo-Afghan Wars (London: Pan Books, 2003). Accounts such as these
are also full of historical inaccuracies. For example, Stewart claims that
the attack occurred in South Waziristan. His embellishment builds upon
crude representations, as when he states, ‘the heat acted as a catalyst for
the tribes-men’s natural proclivity for violent action’, p. 110. Alan War-
ren in Waziristan, the Faqir of Ipi, and the Indian Army (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000) uncritically repeats the entrenched colonial-era
narrative of the Tochi attack as: ‘Tribal Maliks invited Gee and the offic-
ers of his escort to sit down to a meal, and then sprang a premeditated
ambush’, p. 28.
20 ‘At first there was much murmuring in some quarters, and in Calcutta it
was suggested that the escort had been utterly demoralised and that some-
thing like a sauve qui peut had followed.’ See Mills, Pathan Revolt, p. 16.
21 H. L. Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier (London: John Mur-
ray, 1912), p. 221.
22 Ibid., p. 222.
23 For a groundbreaking exploration of the representations of ‘victory’ and
‘defeat’ in Victorian colonial warfare, see Belich, Victorian Interpretation.
24 Mills, Pathan Revolt, p. 16.
25 Quoted in Risings on the North-West Frontier, p. 19.
26 See Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997); Edward Spiers, The Army and Society, 1815–1914 (Lon-
don: Longman, 1980); W. S. Hamer, The British Army: Civil-Military
Relations, 1885–1905 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); Byron Farwell,
Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory (Ontario: Penguin Books
Canada Ltd., 1985); and Ian Beckett, ‘Soldiers, the Frontier and the Poli-
tics of Command in British India’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 16,
no. 3 (2005), pp. 280–92.
27 W. Murray Hogben, ‘British Civil-Military Relations on the North-West
Frontier of India’, in Adrian Preston and Peter Dennis (eds.), Swords
and Covenants (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1976), pp. 123–46
and Christian Tripodi, Edge of Empire: The British Political Officer and
Tribal Administration on the North-West Frontier, 1877–1947 (Surrey,
VT: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 123–46. See also Andrew M. Roe, Waging War
in Waziristan: The British Struggle in the Land of Bin Laden, 1849–1947
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010).
180 Sameetah Agha
28 In the Frontier during the period under question, an officer referred to as a
‘political’ did not necessarily mean a civil servant in the strict sense. Many
political officers had military backgrounds, and the rest came from the
Indian Civil Service. The politicals held the forward posts of the empire. It
was their job in the Frontier to maintain relations with the tribes and keep
the government informed of the temper and attitude of the tribes.
29 Major G. V. Kemball, R.A., Operations of the Tochi Field Force in 1897–
98 (Simla: Intelligence Branch, Quartermaster General’s Department
[hereafter Q.M.G.’s Dept.], 1900).
30 Ibid., p. 12.
31 Ibid., pp. 16–17.
32 For the role of princes, informants, secretaries, spies, and translators,
including the institution of the Indian Civil Service, in the establishment
and maintenance of the British Indian Empire, see Samiksha Sehrawat,
‘“Hostages in Our Camp”: Military Collaboration Between Princely
India and the British Raj, c.1880–1920’, in B. Pati and W. Ernst (eds.),
India’s Princely States: People, Princes and Colonialism (London; New
York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 118–38; Mohinder Singh Pannu, Partners of
British Rule: Liberators or Collaborators? (New Delhi: Allied Publishers
Private Limited, 2006); Christopher A. Bayly, Empire and Information:
Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
33 While such agents appear in general histories, the dynamics of how col-
laboration functioned on the North-West Frontier has yet to be explored.
Intelligence and spying on the Frontier have received some attention. For
example see Robert Johnson, Spying for Empire: The Great Game in Cen-
tral and South Asia, 1757–1947 (London: Greenhill Books, 2006).
34 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds.), Tensions of Empire: Colo-
nial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1997), p. 6.
35 Memorandum by Major-General G. C. Bird, President, Trial on Madda
Khel Prisoners, 27 December 1897, PGOI, Sec F, 1898, NAI.
36 In 1995 during a field research trip in Tochi, North Waziristan, I con-
ducted interviews with several Wazir elders including Sadda Khan’s great-
grandson, Malik Abdul Wadud. Oral traditional accounts of the Maizar
attack were still widely known, including recollections of Honda Ram,
Mr Gee and Ghulam Muhammad Khan.
37 From Gee to the Commissioner & Superintendent, Derajat Division, 19
June 1897, PGOI, FF, July 1897.
38 Ibid.
39 From Commissioner, Derajat to Simla & Punjab, 16 June 1897, PGOI, FF,
June 1897, NAI.
40 Extract from Wana Diary for 21 to 24 June 1897, PGOI, FF, July 1897,
Directorate of Archives (hereafter DOA), Peshawar, Pakistan.
41 Enquiry into the Causes of the Maizar Outbreak & Conduct of
Maliks, &c., PGOI, FF, July 1897, DOA, Peshawar, Pakistan.
42 Translation of a letter from Malik Sadda Khan, Madda Khel, dated 4th
Rabi-us-Sani 1315 H. Corresponding to the 2 September 1897, PGOI, Sec
F, October 1897, DOA, Peshawar, Pakistan.
 Deciphering the Maizar military tribunal, 1897 181
43 From Major-General G. Corrie Bird, C. B., Commanding Tochi Field
Force to the Secretary to GOI, Foreign Department, 25 September 1897,
PGOI, FF, October 1897, NAI.
44 From Major-General Corrie Bird to Secretary, GOI, 13 October 1897,
PGOI, FF, October 1897, NAI.
45 Translation of a letter from the Madda Khel Maliks, to Major-General G.
C. Bird, C. B., General Officer Commanding, Tochi Field Force, dated the
23rd Rabi al-awwal 1315 H., NAI.
46 From the Commissioner and Superintendent, Derajat Division to the Offi-
ciating Chief Secretary to the Government of Punjab, PGOI, Sec F, Sep-
tember 1898, NAI.
47 From Major-General G. Corrie Bird, C.B., to Sir W. J. Cuningham, K.C.S.I.
Dated Camp Kasha Valley, 4 November 1897, NAI.
48 Translation of a petition from Malik Sadda Khan and Madda Khel tribe to
His Excellency the Governor-General of India, dated 18th Jamadi-ul-Sani
1315 Hijri, corresponding to 14 November 1897, NAI.
49 Translation of a petition from the Darwesh Khel Maliks to the Major-
General G. Corrie Bird, C.B., Commanding Tochi Field Force, for submis-
sion to the Viceroy of India and Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, dated
17 November 1897, NAI.
50 E. H. S. Clarke, 20 December 1897, PGOI, Sec F, September 1898, NAI.
51 The Government had demanded the surrender of 17 people, but only these
five surrendered. When the trial commenced, one more came in – Alambe.
He was not tried, but his opinion was recorded by the tribunal.
52 Rather than Sadda Khan speaking on behalf of the tribe, his situation
and his testimony reveal contestations within the operations of empire.
Combining his testimony with that of other maliks and informants, we
are able to establish the main contours of the circumstances leading to and
surrounding the attack.
53 Statement of Sadda Khan to General Bird on 2 November 1897, PGOI,
Sec F, September 1898, NAI, Delhi, India.
54 While analysis of this curious, cultural colonial encounter is beyond the
scope of this article, it brings into play questions about the role of cul-
tural tools within imperialism. The Pukhtun tribes and British troops do
not inhabit the same cultural space. It is not a mutual appreciation of a
shared cultural form that is at play here. There is a power relation being
performed within the framework of imperialism and there exists a clear
divide between the two sides. The fact that the music was played in an
atmosphere of bullying and coercion when the Madda Khels were being
forced to pay up a fine that they had long resisted as unjust, and that
too in the presence of 350 armed troops, again opens up questions about
the purpose and nature of Gee and his military escort’s visit to Maizar.
For a related study see Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and Music: Britain
1876–1953 (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2001).
55 From Major-General G. Corrie Bird, Commanding Tochi Field Force to
the Secretary to the GOI, Foreign Department, 28 December 1897, PGOI,
Sec F, September 1898, NAI.
56 Memorandum by Major-General G. C. Bird, President, Trial on Madda
Khel Prisoners, 27 December 1897, PGOI, Sec F, September 1898, NAI.
182 Sameetah Agha
57 Richard Gott, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (Lon-
don; New York: Verso, 2011), p. 2.
58 A more detailed history of this resistance is explored in my book manu-
script, The Limits of Empire: Imperial Defence, Sub-imperialism and
Pukhtun Resistance.
59 Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire, p. 6.
8 The Indian Army in defeat
Malaya, 1941–2
Kaushik Roy

During the Second World War, the biggest defeat of the Indian Army
occurred in Malaya-Singapore during early 1942 at the hands of the
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). There have been some studies dealing
with the collapse of the Indian Army in Malaya-Singapore Campaign:
Alan Warren focuses on the faults in the internal organization of the
Indian Army,1 while T. R. Moreman and Alan Jeffreys emphasize
doctrinal failure on part of the British and Indian forces.2 However,
there is scope for further analysis. This chapter compares the disas-
trous defeat of the Indian troops in mainland Malaya with that of the
British and Australian Imperial Forces’ (AIF) soldiers, exploring the
reasons behind the speedy Commonwealth/Allied collapse. This chap-
ter is divided into three sections. The first compares and contrasts the
strengths and limitations of the Allied/Commonwealth forces with its
Japanese opponent. The second section discusses the actual conduct of
operations, while the third, and final, section analyzes the structural
and contingent reasons for the failure of Commonwealth defence.
Before we begin, a brief account of the topographical features of the
theatre is necessary in order to understand how geography interacted
with the techniques of combat. The Malayan Peninsula lies between
the Strait of Malacca on the west and the South China Sea in the east.
It is roughly 400 miles long from north to south and varies in width
from 200 miles at its widest part to about 60 miles at its narrowest.
On the north, it joins the Isthmus of Kra. Singapore Island lies at its
southern extremity and is separated from the mainland by the narrow
Strait of Johore. A jungle-covered mountain range runs down the cen-
tre of the peninsula, rising to about 7,000 feet in the north and drop-
ping to some 3,000 feet at its southern end. It is flanked on either side
by the coastal plain and is fringed on the West Coast by mud flats and
mangrove forest. On the east, there are broad curving sandy beaches,
except at the mouth of the rivers, which were mangrove swamps. The
184 Kaushik Roy
plains are intersected by several streams that rise in the central range.
Some of the streams combine to form swift rivers which flow into
the sea. Such streams and rivers are an obstruction to quick north
to south movements. Heavy rainfall occurs throughout the year as
Malaya experiences annually two monsoons: from June to September
in the south-west and from November to March in the north-east.
The former affects the West Coast and the Strait of Malacca; the latter
sweeps across the South China Sea and sets up gales and swells along
the East Coast of Malaya. Violent tropical thunderstorms occur espe-
cially in the late afternoon. The climate is hot, humid and enervating.
The heavy rainfall and dense tropical vegetation cause bad drainage.
So, near the rivers, large jungle swamps are created. Jungle creepers
in the swamps make passage through them almost impossible.3 Large
areas were under rubber plantation and the tightly packed rubber trees
rendered visual communications difficult.4 The West Coast Road was
the main trunk road. It ran from the border of Thailand to Singapore.
The principal network of road on the East Coast was located at Kelan-
tan which was connected southwards to Kuala Terengganu. There was
no continuous road from Kota Bahru/Bharu to Singapore.5

Commonwealth and Japanese forces in Malaya

In late 1941 Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival (General Officer Com-
manding/GOC Malaya) had 31 Australian, British, Indian and Malay
battalions. These battalions were organized into three divisions: the
9th and 11th Indian, and 8th Australian (AIF), each of two brigades.
In addition, there were two reserve brigade groups, two fortress bri-
gades for the Singapore Island and a battalion garrisoning Penang.6
The 9th and 11th Indian divisions came under the 3rd Indian Corps,
which was commanded by Lieutenant General Lewis ‘Piggy’ Heath.
The 9th Indian Infantry Division located in Kuala Lumpur had the 8th
and 22nd infantry brigades. The 11th Indian Infantry Division had 6th
and 15th infantry brigades. The 3rd Indian Corps Head Quarters was
also in Kuala Lumpur. The two reserve brigades were 28th Infantry
Brigade (Corps Reserve) and the 12th Indian Infantry Brigade (Malaya
Command Reserve).7
On 18 February 1941, the 22nd AIF Brigade reached Singapore. The
8th AIF Division while completing preliminary training in Australia
like the Indian formations focused on preparing for combat opera-
tions in the Middle East. Thus, after deploying to Malaya, entirely
new training had to be undertaken due to the different conditions.
Moreover, given the dense vegetation and few roads, the role of long
 The Indian Army in defeat 185
range weapons and mechanical transport was limited.8 Incoming offic-
ers accepted Malaya Command’s assumption that the jungles were
impassable, and as a result, the troops did not focus on jungle training
but on beach defence. This was a mistake and a major contribution
of the problems to come. What was required of the men was jungle
patrolling by small teams in order to familiarize the troops with the
jungle environment. Field craft and its specialist variant-jungle craft,
which comprised an essential element for training in jungle warfare
required according to one British officer, six months of hard and real-
istic training. But, time was one thing which was not available to the
Malaya Command.
The Indian brigades faced further problems. The motivation of
at least some of the Indian units had deteriorated markedly in con-
sequence of political developments in India. The Raj was becoming
increasingly unpopular especially among the politically conscious, uni-
versity-educated urban middle class, from which most of the Indian
commissioned officers, especially in the Indianizing units, were drawn.
Even among the illiterate sepoys and the partially literate Viceroy’s
Commissioned Officers (VCOs), there was a ‘trickle down’ effect.
They believed that if Britain was fighting to protect democracy and
freedom against the Fascist powers, then India must also have freedom
which in turn would enable the people of the subcontinent to ame-
liorate their poverty. Captain Mohan Singh, of the 1st/14th Punjab
Regiment, left Bombay on 9 March 1941 for Penang, and recalls in his
memoirs, ‘Not a single soldier was keen for service overseas. India, at
that time, did not appear to be threatened with an invasion. There was
not the slightest doubt that we were being exploited by the British for
their own ends. This war was not our war.’9
‘Milking’ also negatively affected the Indian units in Malaya as in
Hong Kong. Since new units were raised quickly in India, many expe-
rienced troops were repatriated to bolster new levies. This in turn seri-
ously reduced the battle worthiness of the regiment. As a consequence,
the 4th/19th Hyderabad Regiment spent most of its time giving basic
training to the raw recruits. Worse, these recruits were woefully under-
equipped, coming from India without rifles, steel helmets and other
basic equipment. More than half of the rifles used by the Regiment
were of pre-1918 vintage.10
Other formations were also poorly supplied. The 5th/11th Sikh
Regiment left Quetta on 1 April 1939 for Singapore. While the Vickers
Berthier Gun, a replacement for the Lewis Gun and the Sten (Brown-
ing) Gun, along with wireless set Number 31, 2-inch and 3-inch mor-
tars were issued for the first time no anti-tank mines were supplied.11
186 Kaushik Roy
The British officers had concluded that tanks could not be used in
the Malayan terrain. Hence, no tanks were included in the Common-
wealth forces’ order of battle (ORBAT). The infantry divisions were
given few anti-tank mines, but they were kept in reserve and only a
few were ever issued to the units. Some of the infantry battalions were
given a few carriers which were lightly armoured tracked vehicles with
an open top.12 These carriers were easily pierced by Japanese armour-
penetrating bullets. And due to their open tops, these tracked vehicles
were vulnerable to grenades and Japanese snipers.
Besides inadequate equipment, the 5th Battalion of the Sikh Regi-
ment had been milked thoroughly, with the result that 450 recruits
and six British Emergency Commissioned Officers (ECOs), who were
unable to speak Urdu essential to communicate with the troops, had
joined just a few days prior to embarkation. However, the necessary
training could not be carried out as, following the arrival of the unit at
Kuantan, emphasis was laid on the immediate preparation of defences.
In October 1941, the battalion lost even more handpicked offic-
ers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and jawans (privates) who
returned to India to raise another machine-gun (MG) battalion.13 Thus
the battalion lacked veteran commissioned British officers and Indian
NCOs and had few opportunities for effective training to induct new
recruits.
The 28th Indian Infantry Brigade comprised of 2nd/1st Gurkha
Regiment (GR), 2nd/2nd GR and 2nd/9th GR. Like the Australians,
this formation had trained for the Middle East. By early August, the
units had completed platoon, company and battalion training and the
brigade group had conducted three days continuous motor transport
(MT) exercise. However, in roadless terrain of Malaya, its emphasis
on MT was useless. The brigade was mobilized and equipped with
3-inch mortars and Tommy Guns before leaving Secunderabad. But,
there were only 18 Bren Guns and one 2-inch mortar per battalion.
Further, there were no anti-tank rifles. The jawans (Indian privates)
had no opportunity to train extensively with the new weapons. The
3-inch mortar detachments fired 12 rounds as demonstration before
leaving, and each section command to whom the Tommy Guns were
issued fired only 24 rounds.14
Some of the commanding officers recognized the shortcomings of
the force: Brigadier W. Carpendale, of the 28th Indian Infantry Bri-
gade notes: ‘I asked if unit representatives could be sent to a Jungle
Warfare School. Was informed that such a School did not exist, and
that it was not proposed to start one.’15 There was a conceptual fail-
ure on part of Malaya Command to realize that combat could occur
 The Indian Army in defeat 187
in the jungle terrain. Next Carpendale requested issue of practice
ammunition to continue training of the Bren Gunners, 3 and 2-inch
mortar detachments, tracer ammunition for anti-aircraft (AA) guns
and ammunition for Tommy Guns. However, due to the ammunition
shortage in Malaya, the requested items came only in October 1941.
Even then, tracer ammunition was never received and so no AA gun
training could be carried out.16
However, Carpendale attempted to initiate some training on his
own by carrying out a detailed reconnaissance of the surrounding
region with the commanding officers of the three battalions in order
to modify the training regimen to suit the physical environment of
Malaya. These revealed that there was only one road and it was impos-
sible to get the vehicles or the carriers out of the road into the rubber
plantation Overall, vehicular movement off the road was extremely
limited if not impossible.17 Carpendale realized that the thick jungle
country could be traversed by the infantry only by cutting its way
through the forest whenever necessary, though infantry could move
through the rubber plantations and the paddy fields on both sides of
the road. So, while the MT would move along the road, the country-
side on either side of the road could be dominated by the infantry.
This method was emphasized during the platoon training period dur-
ing September 1941.18 However, while Carpendale had hit upon an
effective method there was insufficient time for the troops to absorb it.
Other troops in the Malaya Command had even less opportunity for
such training, and this must be considered one of the primary reasons
for their poor performance.
Though the Indian formations had no specific jungle training doc-
trine at their disposal, resourceful commanders were ready to impro-
vise. Additionally, the general training regulations issued by General
Headquarters (GHQ) India addressed the so-called Small Wars and
the war which unfolded in Malaya from 7 December 1941 had several
similarities with the Small Wars which the Indian Army had conducted
for more than a century along the North-West Frontier. The problem
with the Indian units in Malaya in late 1941 was that they were not
adequately trained even in the basic principles of Small War because of
rapid expansion of the Indian Army, the presence of raw recruits in the
ranks and outflow of experienced personnel and VCOs due to milking
for the new units demanded by Total War.
The British commanders also expended valuable energy prepar-
ing for the wrong war: considerable attention was paid, for example,
countering potential Japanese chemical warfare techniques. The 9th
Indian Infantry Division’s command assumed that both the Japanese
188 Kaushik Roy
Air Force (the Japanese had no separate air force but used the air units
attached with the Imperial Japanese Navy and the IJA) and the IJA
would conduct chemical warfare. It was feared that the Japanese Air
Force in addition to bombing by high explosive bombs could carry out
an aerial spray of poisonous chemicals (maybe mustard gas). In case of
chemical bombing, the training orders noted that the soldiers should
attempt to avoid it by concealment and dispersing. Further, gas detec-
tors should be provided to the AA defensive posts. For air defence,
it was noted that provisions should be made for light machine-guns
(LMGs). It was calculated that fire from LMGs and rifles on Japanese
aircraft flying below 1,500 feet for ground strafing would be effective.
It was noted that special care should be taken to protect the British
officers’ mess and the barracks of the British soldiers.19 Such a racial
bias obviously did not bode well for the motivation of the division’s
personnel, bulk of whom were Indians.
In early September 1941, Lieutenant General Percival paid the 28th
Indian Infantry Brigade a visit. He gave the officers a lecture on the
defence of Malaya. He claimed that a seaborne invasion of Malaya
was impossible and that the Japanese would be unable to bring their
troop transports down to the South China Sea due to the presence of
Allied air units. Further, said Percival, due to the onset of the mon-
soon, landings between December and March would be almost impos-
sible.20 Percival could hardly have been more wrong.
Contrary to expectations, the Japanese were well trained and well
equipped for conducting ground war in a tropical environment. Most
of the Japanese troops had battle experience in China, and they were
able to grasp the techniques and principles of conducting war in the
tropics quite easily and efficiently. Colonel Masanobu Tsuji writes in
his account: ‘Prior to the outbreak of war in the Pacific, I was a staff
officer of the Imperial General Headquarters, and at the end of 1940
was assigned to prepare plans for operations in Malaya. Just before the
actual commencement of hostilities there, we carried out maneuvers in
tropical warfare in southern Indochina.’21 The Japanese rifle compa-
nies were experts in infiltration and flanking movement off the roads.
They wore light uniform: cotton shorts and rubber soled shoes – and
their cross-country mobility was remarkable.22 The Japanese infantry
also wore rubber belts which could be inflated for crossing the rivers.23
They were well equipped and well trained for tropical warfare.24
In general, Japanese infantry compared to the Allied (Common-
wealth) troops carried more grenade dischargers and sub-machine
guns. Most of the rifleman had grenade dischargers (also known as
 The Indian Army in defeat 189
knee mortars) which provided organic fire support to the small units.25
The Japanese used four types of mortars.26 These weapons were effec-
tive for conducting close-quarter battle in the closed jungle country
and amidst rubber plantations. The ammunition boxes were carried
on shoulder packs which left the arms free for negotiating difficult
terrain and allowed greater freedom of action under fire. Thus, the
advance elements even when they were held in check by hostile sol-
diers had recourse to ammunition supply. It also held true for water
supply to the advance elements as the soldiers had large canteens full
of water strapped at their backs. Again, most of the Japanese soldiers
landed in North Malaya without adequate rations but got aid from
the local supporters. The Japanese were able to live off the rich land
of Malaya.27
The Japanese invasion force (25th Japanese Army) was led by
Lieutenant General ‘Tiger’ Tomoyuki Yamashita. The IJA’s 5th Divi-
sion was a specialist formation. It had concentrated on amphibious
operation and had conducted war in China since 1937. And the 18th
Japanese Division was a veteran unit strengthened with extra allot-
ments of light artillery and combat engineers for bridging which in
turn allowed the formation to move quickly through difficult terrain.28
Japanese topographical knowledge regarding Malaya, as with Hong
Kong, was excellent and up to date, largely as a result of the sophis-
ticated intelligence gathering operation undertaken before the war.29
The British Official History alludes that there were few civilian Jap-
anese in pre-war Malaya. Some were businessmen, and others were
barbers and photographers. The businessmen owned rubber estates
and mines. They were allowed to operate a direct service of freight
ships from Malaya to Japan. They thus had an intimate knowledge of
the coastline. A number of executives in such plantations were serv-
ing and retired Japanese armed forces officers. And they organized an
espionage service and were aware of all the defence works constructed
in Malaya.30
The 25th Japanese Army was supported by the 3rd Air Corps with
some 612 aircraft.31 The single-seater Buffalo was no match against
the Japanese fighters. While the rate of climb of the Japanese Zero
fighter to 13,000 feet was 4.3 minutes, for Buffalo it was about 6.1
minutes. The speed and range of the Zero fighter were greater than
that of Buffalo.32 The Commonwealth Vildebeeste aircraft was obso-
lete.33 The Japanese pilots were enterprising and skilful, and their
high-level bombing was good. The Hurricanes arrived too late and in
insufficient number to win back air superiority.34
190 Kaushik Roy
Conduct of operations
The strategic outlook for the British in Malaya worsened when on
25 September 1940, the Japanese occupied northern portion of Indo-
China.35 Robert Brooke-Popham failed to take a limited risk and
order advance British-Indian troops to Singora to prepare a defensive
line there,36 when Japanese ships were first sighted on 6 December.
At this point of time, the British military high command in Malaya
was confused. The Japanese ships were steaming west towards the
Gulf of Siam but whether their objective was Cambodia or Siam or
Malaya was unclear. When it became clear, late on 7 December, that
the Japanese were aiming to invade Malaya, Brooke-Popham judged
that it was already too late to launch MATADOR.37 Andrew Gilchrist
claims that if MATADOR had been launched then the situation could
have been saved.38 As regards this issue, the jury is still undecided.
The objective here is not to give a detailed blow-by-blow account of
operations but to elucidate some selected pieces of combat to show the
strengths of the Japanese vis-à-vis the weaknesses of the Allied/Com-
monwealth troops in general and the Indians in particular.
The Japanese landed at Kota Bahru in North-East Kelantan on the
night of 6/7 December 1941.39 At 0025 hours on 8 December, the
Japanese troops started landing at the junction of Badang and Sabak
beaches. By 0100 hours, the pill boxes manned by the 3rd/17th Dogra
Regiment were captured.40 The coastal area was intersected with
creeks and streams, and there were extensive swamps and stretches of
jungle.41 On the East Coast of Malaya, an elaborate system of beach
defence was constructed at Kota Bahru area and in Kuantan. But, the
8th and the 22nd Indian brigades lacked the strength both to man the
pill boxes and provide adequate reserves. In general, the 8th Indian
Infantry Brigade was in charge of defending six beaches, each about
five miles in length and a river front of 10 miles plus three aerodromes.
The Commonwealth ground forces had been assured that Japanese
landings would be broken up by air action.42 However, when Japanese
landings occurred, the Royal Air Force (RAF) was absent.
Overall, the 22nd Indian Infantry Brigade was in charge of watch-
ing two long beaches and an aerodrome in Kuantan area.43 The 22nd
Indian Infantry Brigade had two Indian infantry battalions for this
purpose. The 2nd/18th Royal Garhwal Rifles (RGR) was tasked to
defend 10 miles of beach frontage extending from the mouth of Kuan-
tan River in the south to the mouth of the Balok River in the north.
Further, the unit was ordered to construct pill boxes, wire and anti-
tank obstacles in the area under its command. The 5th/11th Sikhs was
 The Indian Army in defeat 191
ordered to defend the approach to Kuantan and Soi rivers including
the ferry and the road approach to Pekan with two companies. One
company provided ground and AA defence to the aerodrome. Two
platoons were held in reserve. The battalion was further ordered that
it might have to deal with airborne landings or incursions on the line
of communications (LoCs) from Pahang River in the south to jungle
tracks in the north. Further, the unit had to prepare itself to launch
counter-attacks.44 Due to shortage of Bren Guns, the 5th/11th Sikh
Regiment continued to use Lewis Guns for AA defence. The weapon
stopped after the first burst, thus ensuring Japanese aerial superiority
was more or less unchallenged.45
The Commanding Officer (CO) of the 5th/11th Sikh Regiment was
Lieutenant Colonel John Parkins. Limited training in jungle warfare
was carried out because the emphasis was on construction of fixed
defence works. This was a tactical mistake made by the higher military
authorities. Instead of fixed ground defences, the focus should have
been on carrying out manoeuvre by small parties in the jungle country.
In this sphere, the Commonwealth troops proved deficient vis-à-vis
the IJA’s infantry which bypassed the fixed defences and outflanked
repeatedly the Allied defensive units by moving across them through
the jungle country.46
On 8 December, the commander of the Kelantan Front moved up
his reserve unit: 1st/13th Frontier Force Rifles (FFR) with some anti-
tank guns from Peringat. At 1030 hours, the 2nd/12th FFR (less two
companies) was ordered to counter-attack from the south and the
1st/13th FFR from the north. However, thick waterlogged countryside
and almost impassable creeks behind the beaches created problems
with the counter-attacking troops. The Indian troops, unlike the Japa-
nese, were just not trained to advance along such a difficult terrain.
And the counter-attack came to a halt at 1700 hours. Worse, at about
1630 hours, the RAF Station Commander decided that Kota Bahru
aerodrome was no longer fit to operate aircraft and obtained permis-
sion from Air Officer Commanding (AOC) Far East to evacuate the
aerodrome. By 1900 hours, more Japanese ships were reported in the
Sabang Beach and the Japanese started to infiltrate along the beaches
in the Kota Bahru area. The commander of the Kelantan Force decided
to withdraw to a line east of Kota Bahru. That night was pitch-dark
with heavy rainfall. In the ensuing confusion, part of the 1st/13th FFR
was left behind.47
Once ashore, Japanese troops advanced swiftly and effectively:
Major H. P. Thomas wrote: ‘The landing at Kota Bahru on night the
6/7th December, under the conditions prevailing at the time, indicated
192 Kaushik Roy
a thorough mastery of this type of operation. . . . Once ashore in
strength, it was only a matter of hours before they succeeded in worm-
ing their way to the rear of the beach defences.’48 Boldness on part
of the Japanese did pay them dividends in this case. The Takumi
Detached Force of the 18th Japanese Division which successfully con-
ducted assault landing at Kota Bahru at 0130 hours on 8 December
did indeed suffer heavy casualties.49 But, the Japanese relentlessly
pushed on.
As an alternative to MATADOR, there was another plan for a much
more limited offensive action. This plan was named as Operation
SANDWICH. It involved a forward move by road of the 6th Indian
Infantry Brigade and 1st/14th Punjab Regiment to Singora (Songkhla)
for destroying the port facilities in the latter place. Then, this force
would retreat to Jitra carrying out demolitions along the route.50 The
original aim was that the KROHCOL (a column which operated on
the Kroh-Patani Road) under Lieutenant Colonel H. D. Moorhead
should comprise of the 3rd/16th Punjab Regiment and 5th/14th Pun-
jab Regiment from Penang, one company of sappers and miners, one
field ambulance and 10th Mountain Battery from the North Kedah.
The 5th/14th Punjab Regiment moved up to Kroh (a small town on
the Malayan side of the border) on 8 December. The responsibility
for Kroh Front on 8 December was delegated by the commander of
the 3rd Indian Corps to the commander of the 11th Indian Division.
At 1330 hours on 8 December, the commander of KROHCOL was
ordered to occupy the Ledge position some 40 miles beyond the fron-
tier. The Ledge was a position on the road which ran from Patani,
a small Thai port, a little to the south of Singora. It was hoped that
the Thais would display benevolent neutrality. However, as soon
as the vanguard of the KROHCOL moved across the frontiers at
1500 hours, they were engaged by Thai police armed with light auto-
matics and rifles. Further, Japanese snipers and roadblocks delayed
the column. The Japanese would use these tactics repeatedly against
the road-bound Commonwealth troops. By nightfall, the column had
advanced only three miles.51
On the North Kedah Front, a mechanized column comprising of
two companies and the carriers of 1st/8th Punjab Regiment with some
anti-tank guns and engineers crossed the Thai frontier at 1730 hours
on 8 December. Their aim was Singora to harass and delay the Japa-
nese. Singora was an East Coast Thai port with gentle sloping beach.
It had an airfield surrounded by rice fields.52 An armoured train with
a detachment of the 2nd/16th Punjab Regiment and some engineers
advanced into Thailand from Padang Besar in Perlis. The Singora
 The Indian Army in defeat 193
column at dusk reached Ban Sadao, some 10 miles north of the fron-
tier. There it halted and took position north of the village. At about
2130 hours, it confronted a Japanese mechanized column headed by
tanks and moving in close formation with headlights on. The two lead-
ing tanks were knocked out by anti-tank guns but then the Japanese
infantry swarmed around and started an enveloping movement. The
Commonwealth infantry had no answer to the light Japanese infantry’s
swarming tactics. Then, the Singora Column was withdrawn through
Kampong Imam and destroyed three bridges during its retreat. The
armoured train party reached Klong Gnea in Thailand and destroyed
a large bridge before withdrawing to Padang Besar.53 The Japanese
engineers quickly repaired these bridges and the Nipponese troops
pushed on. Overall, the senior British officers wasted time and assets
in launching ill-conceived pinprick attacks across the Thai frontier
when things were heating up along the East Coast of North Malaya.
By the evening of 8 December, the 5th Japanese Division had com-
pleted its concentration in the Singora-Patani area. The 5th Japanese
Division’s order was to advance rapidly southwards to the line of
Perak River. This division started moving south through two roads:
Singora to Alor Star and Patani to Kroh. The 9th Japanese Infantry
Brigade supported by a tank battalion and a battalion of field artillery
moved down the Alor Star Road with orders to destroy the Common-
wealth force at Jitra. The 42nd Japanese Infantry Regiment with two
companies of light tanks and a battery of field artillery moved by the
Kroh Road with the objective of cutting communications of the Allied
units north of Perak River.54
Kuantan was a small port on the East Coast of Malaya some 200
miles from Singapore. On 9 December, at 1100 hours, the Japanese
attacked the airport twice with 27 planes each time. The RAF was
caught on the ground. Three aircraft were destroyed and five were
injured. The young soldiers of A Company of 5th/11th Sikh Regiment
fought on ineffectively with their LMGs and small arms for two hours
against the Japanese aerial raiders.55
On the Singora Road, the advance of the Japanese column was
delayed by the engagement at Ban Sadao and due to demolished bridges.
At 0430 hours on 10 December, the Japanese reached the region north
of Changlun. The 1st/14th Punjab Regiment with some artillery and
engineers took a position behind a stream south of Changlun Cross
Road. Early on the morning of 10 December, the Japanese made
contact with the forward detachments of 1st/14th Punjab Regiment.
The Punjabis retreated southwards. The 15th Indian Brigade’s com-
mander Brigadier K. A. Garrett was ordered by Major General D. M.
194 Kaushik Roy
Murray-Lyon (GOC 11th Indian Division) to hold the Japanese north
of Asun at least till the morning of 11/12 December. The 2nd/1st GR
(less one company) was detached from the 28th Indian Brigade and
given to the 15th Indian Brigade. This battalion took over the Asun
position and the Punjabis were concentrated forward.56
In the Kedah Front, the plan for the defence of Jitra position was to
hold it with two brigades forward: the 15th Indian Infantry Brigade
on the right and the 6th Indian Infantry Brigade on the left. Of the two
forward battalions of the 15th Indian Infantry Brigade, the 2nd/9th Jat
Regiment took up extended positions from the hills on the right flank
to the main road. On this unit’s left was deployed the 1st Leicesters
who covered both the main and the Perlis Road. West of the Leices-
ters, was placed the 2nd East Surreys which happened to be the right
battalion of the 6th Indian Infantry Brigade. The East Surreys covered
the wooded Pisang salient forward of the Alor Changlih Canal. On
their left, the 2nd/16th Punjab Regiment covered the region from the
railway to the sea. It had positions on the railway and the coast and
patrolled the paddy fields and the marsh which intervened between the
railway and the coast. The outpost position of the 6th Indian Brigade
at Kampong Imam was held by the reserve 1st/8th Punjab Regiment.
The 28th Indian Infantry Brigade was supposed to become divisional
reserve on arrival at the Alor Star aerodrome region. The divisional
artillery consisted of two batteries of 155th Field Regiment. Each bat-
tery had eight 4.5-inch howitzers. In addition, the 22nd Mountain
Regiment and the 80th Anti-Tank Regiment with 16 Bofors plus the
137th Field Regiment (24 25-pounders) comprised the divisional artil-
lery. So, it packed a powerful punch. Other units were less effective:
the 3rd Indian Cavalry was the division’s assigned reconnaissance regi-
ment but had it had arrived without its armoured vehicles. Moreover,
the regiment had only recently handed over its horses and consisted
of three squadrons of dismounted men who were mostly recruits with
little training. The regiment had few trained drivers and only a few,
newly issued unarmoured trucks.57
The Jitra defensive position was not completed before the Japanese
attacked on 11 December. Most of the posts became waterlogged after
a week’s heavy rain. The rains also adversely affected demolitions.58
The Japanese took advantage of the jungle on the right flank of the
imperial defensive position. By cutting a passage through the thick
foliage, the Japanese troops exploded the erroneous idea that it was
impossible to move through the jungle-covered countryside.59 On 13
December 1941, the Commonwealth troops evacuated Jitra.
 The Indian Army in defeat 195
By 20 December, Kelantan too was evacuated.60 On the same day,
the 11th Division withdrew to the Perak River.61 Percival had to dissi-
pate his force throughout the coast of Malaya. He provided the reason
for this dissipation: ‘On the east coast they had complete liberty of
action. I thought a combined sea and air attack against Kuantan was
likely, and I could not disregard the possibility of an attack against the
east coast of Johore or even against Singapore Island itself.’62
Percival’s revised operational plan was as follows: ‘I had calculated
that, if we were to prevent the Japanese getting the use of the Cen-
tral Malaya aerodromes before the mid-January convoy arrived, we
must hold him north of the Kuala Kubu road junction until at least 14
January. That would give Paris a depth of seventy miles in which to
maneuver during the next fortnight.’63 Once again, the Japanese threw
spanners in Percival’s plan. On 1 January, patrols of the 5th/11th Sikh
Regiment reported that Kuantan River was fordable west of its posi-
tion. It was realized that the Japanese could cross the river at sev-
eral possible positions and could cut the road in rear of the brigade
headquarters.64
GOC’s Malaya’s strategy at that time was described by Percival him-
self in the following words:

We now knew that we might expect to receive an Indian infantry

brigade with attached troops during the first few days of January
and the whole of the 18th British Division. . . . In this convoy also
were coming fifty Hurricane fighters in crates with their crews.
In them lay our first hope of regaining some sort of air superior-
ity. . . . If the enemy could, before its arrival, be in a position to
operate his aircraft from the aerodromes in Central Malaya, espe-
cially those at Kuantan and Kuala Lumpur, the scale of that attack
would be greatly increased. . . . The convoy was due to reach
Singapore about 13–5 January.65

On the night of 4/5 January, Paris was ordered to move 15th Brigade
(less 3rd/16th Punjab Regiment) from Sungkai to Tanjong Malim,
3rd/16th Punjab Regiment to Rawang and the rest of the 11th Divi-
sion to hold an intermediate position in the Trolak-Slim River area
covering the probable river crossings.66 At 0300 hours on 7 Janu-
ary 1942, the Japanese initiated heavy artillery fire. In the moonlight,
10 light Japanese tanks moved across the road. The light tanks were
followed by 20 armoured cars and a few medium tanks. The Battle
for Slim River had started.67 The Japanese infantry–tank combination
196 Kaushik Roy
penetrated along a narrow front and was able to overwhelm the nerv-
ous untrained Allied infantry.
Sixty-six Hurricanes arrived on Singapore from the much-desired
convoy, though they were too few and too late to win back air superi-
ority for Commonwealth forces.68 The Japanese Imperial Guards Divi-
sion occupied the town of Malacca on 14 January. Lieutenant-General
Takumo Nishimura, GOC of the Japanese Guards Division, concluded
that instead of consolidating his position, it would aid the Japanese
force on the trunk road and would raise further the prestige of his
division if he could capture the Muar-Batu Pahat area. So, he pushed
forward the 4th Japanese Guards Regiment on the right and the 5th
Japanese Guards Regiment on the left. The former was to occupy the
attention of the forces holding Muar town and the latter to make an
upstream crossing of the river at night and attack the town from the
east. The 4th Japanese Guards Regiment was then to make for Batu
Pahat along the coast road and the 5th Japanese Guards Regiment to
advance along the inland road to Yong Peng.69
On 16 January 1942, the Japanese made contact with the 45th Indian
Brigade positioned at the left flank of WESTFORCE in the Muar area.
Two battalions of the 45th Indian Brigade were deployed on Bennett’s
instruction along the Sungai Muar’s winding course. One of these units
was the 4th/9th Jat Regiment, which had a company each at Grisek,
Panchor and Jorak and fighting patrols north of the river. The 4th/9th
Jat was trained for deployment in the Caucasus region to help the Rus-
sians. But, suddenly it was sent to Malaya. All the trucks of this bat-
talion were camouflaged for snow conditions and made an excellent
target for the Japanese aircraft.70 The other unit was the 7th/6th Rajpu-
tana Rifles which covered the region between Jorak and the mouth of
the river. This unit had two companies north of the river. It was a mis-
judged deployment since if these companies were attacked they would
get no support from the sister companies deployed on the other side of
the river. Further, in the event of a Japanese concentration of force the
advanced companies north of the river would have to conduct a fight-
ing retreat and cross the river under hostile gunfire and while the Japa-
nese enjoyed aerial supremacy. It was a tough task for veterans and
almost impossible for the ‘rookies’. The two aforementioned battal-
ions covered 15 and nine miles of the front respectively. The 5th/18th
RGR was placed in reserve at Bukri, with a company forward at Sim-
pang Jeram on the inland road from Muar and a detachment south of
Parit Jawa, where another road came in from the coast to Bakri. For
fire support, the 45th Indian Brigade was allotted the 65th Australian
Battery of the 2nd Battalion of the 15th Field Regiment.71
 The Indian Army in defeat 197
The principal crossing of the Muar River from the network of roads
in Malacca was near the river mouth by ferry to the township of Muar.
The banks of the river were covered with jungle. The disposition of
two companies of the Rajputana Rifles on the far side of the river was
part of Gordon Bennett’s policy of following aggressive defence and his
desire to ambush the advancing Japanese. On 16 January, the Rajput
company east of Muar was attacked. A Japanese company reached the
Muar town from the eastern direction and overwhelmed the battalion
headquarters. Both the Rajput companies north of Muar River were
lost. Bennett’s misjudgement in deploying the two Rajput companies
on the north bank of river without additional fire and infantry sup-
port was exposed, and on the night of 16 February, remnants of the
7th/6th Rajputana Rifles withdrew down the coast to Parit Jawa and
then to Bakri.72
‘Battle hardened’ Australians, as well as ‘inexperienced’ Indians
troops, were also frequently ambushed by the Japanese. The gunners
under Lieutenant R. McLeod on their way to support the advance
headquarters of the 5th/18th RGR at Simpang Jeram were ambushed
early on 16 January. The Garhwalis were attacked on the same day
at about 1100 hours and soon retreated into a rubber plantation.
In close-quarter combat with hand grenades and bayonets, the Jap-
anese again demonstrated their superiority and at 1300 hours, the
Garhwalis started retreating again. The 4th/9th Jat Regiment was
not attacked but when they saw that the Japanese had crossed Muar
River, the commander of the Jat unit withdrew his forward companies
and concentrated them on the road from Panchor to Muar. Bakri,
the headquarters of the 45th Indian Brigade, and, only 30 miles from
the trunk road at Yong Peng, was threatened. Late on 16 January, it
was reported that the Japanese had landed south-west of the town of
Batu Pahat and were moving inland. They posed a threat to the rear
of the 45th Indian Brigade and also to the communications of the
WESTFORCE. Nishimura’s plan was working with clocklike preci-
sion. By 17 January, the 5th Japanese Guards Regiment had com-
pleted its crossing of the Muar River.73 The Japanese overturned the
Muar position by applying frontal pressure through infiltration tac-
tics and carrying out small-scale amphibious landings along the West
Coast of Malaya under Colonel Masakazu Ogaki in order to outflank
the static Allied defensive position.74 From 27 January onwards, the
Allied force in Malaya started retreating towards the causeway. The
causeway was blown at 0800 hours on 31 January 1942.75 The Battle
for mainland Malaya was over and the Battle for Singapore Island
was about to start.
198 Kaushik Roy
Reasons behind commonwealth military failure
Events in Malaya, when they become to be known, will make very sad
reading and the Indian Army will not feel very proud of itself when
facts become known.
—General Staff India, New Delhi, 16 January 194276

On 15 February 1942, after about 70 days of fighting along the

length of Malaya Peninsula and Singapore, a Commonwealth force
of 130,000 was defeated.77 Some 45,000 IJA soldiers took part in
the Malaya Operation, underscoring the fact that the Japanese won
cheaply in Malaya. Around 3,500 Japanese soldiers died during the
Malaya Campaign.78 The total casualties of the Commonwealth
troops (dead and wounded excluding prisoners of war) came to about
roughly 8,000 persons.79
The monsoon and the underdeveloped East Coast of Malaya were
considered as serious obstacles to any Japanese landing operations
in Malaya. The British planners erroneously assumed that the diffi-
cult terrain and bad communications within the Malaya States would
slow down Japanese advance.80 Probably, the naval and air superiority
enjoyed by the Japanese armed forces in the Far East, especially after
Pearl Harbour and the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse off
the coast of Siam, made Commonwealth defeat in Malaya inevitable.
Nevertheless, the crucial issue is why the Commonwealth troops were
defeated by the IJA so easily and cheaply.
Carl Bridge has suggested that: ‘There was undeniably a strong rac-
ist tendency to underestimate the Japanese. Europeans were thought
to rule the world out of some innate superiority.’81 Percival certainly
underestimated the mobility and effectiveness of the Japanese troops,
suggesting the Japanese were the ‘Italians of the East’.82 He believed
the thick jungles of Malaya and difficult terrain and their long LoC
(more than 700 miles) in case of advance from Siam through Malaya
made impossible a rapid Japanese advance across Malaya towards
Singapore. He assumed that Singapore could only be attacked from
sea for which the island seemed to be well prepared. Harbakhsh Singh,
commandant of the Manjha Company of a Sikh regiment which
fought in Malaya, notes: ‘Many British and Commonwealth generals
visited us, and gave talks in which they mostly derided the Japanese
soldiers as bandy-legged and with poor eye-sight who daren’t attack
the British.’83
On 24 December 1941, when the lead elements of Japanese inva-
sion force had only reached Perak River, Yamashita was confident
 The Indian Army in defeat 199
of defeating the Commonwealth force in Malaya. Yamashita con-
cluded that he did not require any additional troops.84 One reason
for the relative ease with which the Japanese were able to gain vic-
tory was their superior generalship.85 Despite some strain, the Japa-
nese command system during the Malaya Campaign functioned more
effectively compared to the Allied command structure. In the Com-
monwealth command system, there were personality clashes, which
debilitated the command effectiveness. For instance, Percival was on
bad terms with Lieutenant-General Lewis Heath, commander of the
3rd Indian Corps.86 Heath was senior to Percival but in Malaya the
former was subordinate to the latter. This was because Percival was
appointed by the London Government and Heath by the Government
of India (GoI).87
Inadequate training was also a factor in retarding effectiveness.
Colonel J. R. Broadbent, the Quartermaster General of the 8th AIF
Division, noted on 28 January 1942:

9th Indian Division . . . has been under us and Henry Gordon

Bennett is responsible for putting fire into them to such an extent
that they are again a fair fighting force and have done well. The
Indian I am afraid has been a failure partly due to lack of training
and damp climate, the rain makes him very miserable, but mainly
because he has been badly lead. British officers with them includ-
ing many brigadiers have no offensive or fighting spirit.88

During the last days of January 1942, both the Indians and the Brit-
ish were probably more exhausted than the relatively fresh Austral-
ians. This was because the Australians had just started fighting when
the Japanese moved into South Malaya while the British and Indi-
ans were at the receiving end of continuous drubbings in the hands
of the Nipponese from the beginning of the Malaya Campaign in 7
December 1941.
Major General H. Gordon Bennett provided several explanations
as regards the debacle in Malaya. He asserted like Broadbent that the
blame was due mostly to the Indian troops who suffered from low
morale. This was because ‘Eastern races less able to withstand modern
war.’ This was a typical racist explanation, which was popularized
among the British officers from late nineteenth century in the guise of
the martial race theory. Besides the racial factor, Bennett also pointed
out certain other organizational and material factors for Common-
wealth failure against the Japanese. Bennett also brought the British
officers under his critical graze. While Indian soldiers suffered from
200 Kaushik Roy
homesickness and lack of entertainment, their British officers had
failed to build up the troops’ morale. For most of the time, the Indian
soldiers were quartered in the rubber plantations and they never saw
the sunlight. He claimed that many British commanders and senior
officers were imbued with ‘retreat complex’ and a spirit of resignation
prevailed among them. This depressing spirit seeped down among the
junior officers who also showed lack of spirit. The net result was that
slightest Japanese aggression resulted in withdrawals without launch-
ing any local counter-attacks. Bennett pointed out the low level of staff
work, especially in the 3rd Indian Corps.89
Both Bennett and Broadbent accused the senior and mid-level Brit-
ish officers of lacking leadership qualities. The morale of the British
soldiers was probably undermined by the belief that the Malayans
had turned against them and some Malayans were working with the
Japanese.90 Distrust of the ‘natives’ was common among the British
throughout their Asian Empire – the British also suspected that many
Chinese were working with the Japanese in Hong Kong Island – and
this was likely an additional contributory factor.
The greatest failure of the British troops in Bennett’s format was
their inadequate training in jungle fighting and conducting patrols.91
Bennett elaborates: ‘The British method attacking position pound it
heavily with artillery until opposition reduced, then advance under
artillery barrage. . . . Beach defence systems provided long thin line
of posts along beach without depth with vulnerable flanks whereas
modern perimeter system of defence on shorter flank much more effec-
tive.’92 Bennett correctly noted the following characteristics of Japa-
nese tactics: infiltration and outflanking; avoiding frontal attack and
search for soft spots; small parties penetrated and then coalesced into
large bodies behind the line causing withdrawal of the imperial troops;
use of trickery, i.e. noise in order to induce fear among the imperial
troops. To conclude, Bennett noted that while the Japanese adapted
their tactics in accordance with the local circumstances, the British
commanders adhered to outmoded rule books and emphasized bar-
rack square training.93
Broadbent penned a report on 28 January 1942 while he was in
the midst of a rubber plantation somewhere 20 miles north of Johore
Bahru. Unlike Bennett, Broadbent pointed out the inadequacies of
both the Australian and other imperial troops. Broadbent asserted:
‘Diversity of types and size of ammunition makes supply difficult
which means more transport on the roads. . . . Infantry has forgotten
that they have to march. . . . The Indian divisions have more transport
 The Indian Army in defeat 201
than us and their drivers are frightful.’94 About the Australian troops,
Broadbent noted:

The Jap has almost complete air superiority and has been bomb-
ing and machine-gunning our forward areas with absolute immu-
nity. The effect on morale is very considerable. . . . The individual
must have complete confidence in his ability to shoot. . . . Japs
climb trees and shoot down. . . . There are many cases of infantry
wading through marshes waist high and above all extra weight
produces a fatigue which is too great to be neglected.95

Unlike Bennett, Broadbent accepted the inadequate tactical culture of

the Australian infantry in close-quarter combat and provided the fol-
lowing correctives:

Main points are infantry must be infantry and forget wheels, they
must be able to shoot straight and quickly, musketry seems to
have been sadly neglected. . . . The Jap streams down the road on
bicycles and is easily ambushed, but he then goes to the ground
and sends out flanking movements which have to be countered by
wide patrols, they work round rear.96

The issue of lack of mobility of the Australian infantry in jungle ter-

rain as discussed by Broadbent was also applicable in case of the Brit-
ish and Indian troops.
A modern historian, Brian P. Farrell repeats several points raised by
Bennett more than 60 years earlier. Farrell claims that the battle tac-
tics and doctrine of the British Army was completely unsuited for the
nature of land war which occurred in Malaya. The battle was fought
efficiently by the IJA at the lowest level of command. But, in the Brit-
ish Army, colonels and not the section commanders made the crucial
decisions. The orthodox British defensive technique was to hold a line
of fixed positions in a static defence relying on the firepower of the dug
in troops and their MGs. They would fix the enemy and the attacking
enemy would be finished off by supporting artillery fire. Rigid control
required senior officers closely directing the battle rather than the ser-
geants operating independently with their small units in the bushes.
Further, the British Army doctrine required preserving the LoCs from
being cut by flanking or encirclement. In 1941, air supply on a large
scale was not possible and this meant giving up the defensive position
and retreat. Farrell continues that the 11th Indian Division was trained
202 Kaushik Roy
to fight 1918-style Western Front battles. The troops were expected to
hold a line with a front and a rear, and supply connection between the
two must be maintained. Their mental map was static defensive war-
fare.97 In other words, conventional static defence by the British and
Indian troops proved to be easy meat for the unorthodox techniques
followed by the nimble Japanese.
Major H. P. Thomas of the Indian Army attempted to rebut Gordon
Bennett’s charges. He noted that while the Indian formations fought
all the way in Malaya, the AIF started fighting only at Johore. In fact,
the casualties suffered by the AIF in the mainland did not exceed 300
men. It is true that the 18th British Division was somewhat hampered
by lack of jungle training and the personnel were not acclimatized in
Malaya’s weather.98 For fighting in the jungle-covered terrain, Bennett
and Broadbent rightly pointed out that large number of wheeled vehi-
cles was a burden.99
Besides inadequate training due to rapid expansion of the Indian
Army from 1941 onwards and absence of proper equipment, there
were several problems specific to the ‘brown’ soldiers of the Raj. Even
trained Indian units which had combat experience on the North-West
Frontier failed to inculcate aptitudes key to success in the jungle. Har-
bakhsh Singh says in his autobiography that the patrols were afraid
of certain areas which they believed were dominated by the king
cobras and pythons which were found in the jungles of Malaya.100
One historian estimates that on average each of the Indian battal-
ions deployed in Malaya lost 240 experienced officers, NCOs and
specialist troops due to the emergency expansion of the Indian Army
and received in exchange raw recruits. This was disastrous in close
country operations in which the presence of experienced junior offic-
ers was vital.101
Additionally, racial discrimination alienated many Indian soldiers
and officers and lowered their morale. Harbakhsh Singh writes that
the strict colour bar in Malaya was very disturbing. The clubs, swim-
ming pools, buses, railway carriages, etc. were for exclusive use of
the white men.102 The Japanese agents were also working to alienate
the sepoys from the sahibs. Major Fujiwara Iwaichi arrived in Thai-
land on 1 October 1941 following a report sent by Colonel Tamura
Hiroshi (Japanese Military Attaché in Bangkok) to Tokyo that nas-
cent Indian nationalism in Thailand and Malaya could be utilized
for Japan’s advantage.103 The Japanese made wide use of propaganda
leaflets which were dropped from the aircraft.104 Japan’s propaganda
war directed especially towards the Indian troops had an effect on
the defeated and demoralized Indian troops who were continuously
 The Indian Army in defeat 203
retreating from the beginning of the campaign. One Sikh commis-
sioned officer notes in his memoirs:

The Japanese were dropping a large number of leaflets, express-

ing their war aims in pithy slogans, assuring the coloured races of
their immediate liberation and beseeching them to join hands in
that mighty undertaking. They were appealing to the honour, dig-
nity and self-respect of all Asians in general, and Indians in par-
ticular: ‘Asia for the Asians’; ‘Kick out the white-devils from the
East’: and ‘India for the Indians’, were some of the propaganda.105

In contrast, at that time, the British had nothing to offer except politi-
cal repression in India and empty slogans.106 The Baluch Regiment, for
instance, proved susceptible to Japanese propaganda.107
Alienation of the sepoys from the sahibs was also because the per-
sonalized bond between the soldiers and their British officers were not
as strong as in the traditional Indian Army. The newly inducted British
officers in the newly raised and expanded Indian units were ‘strangers’
to their men. Worse, these officers did not know the vernacular lan-
guage of the jawans. Urdu was the lingua franca in the Indian Army.
In order to establish a bond with the soldiers, it was necessary for the
British officers to have knowledge about the soldiers’ own languages.
Failure to communicate with the troops certainly reduced battlefield
cohesion within the Indian units.108 On 16 January 1942, the General
Staff of India noted:

The fact that certain Indian troops have not put up a good show
in Malaya, when the testing time came, is due undoubtedly to the
rapid expansion and the policy of milking units at frequent inter-
vals. . . . From the infantry point of view, therefore the position is
not a pleasant one. . . . We require . . . wireless equipment, cable
and other signal equipment. . . . I should add to that, bridging
equipment, barbed wire, Dannert wire, steel helmets and belts and
components of the Vickers Machine Gun Mark I.109

Andrew Gilchrist, who was a senior staff member of the British

Embassy at Bangkok from 1939 to 1942, notes in his autobiography
that the Indian Army was an excellent fighting force, and many of its
units had a military tradition for a hundred years and more. If it had
been represented in Malaya by some of the units which distinguished
themselves in the Middle East, the campaign would certainly have
taken a different turn. But, when in 1940–41 there was an enormous
204 Kaushik Roy
expansion of the Indian Army, the Middle East had priority for all
the best formations, so that only (in effect) raw recruits were left for
Malaya, officered not by long-serving British officers but by ‘callous
young men from England’ who for the most part knew nothing about
Indian customs and traditions and spoke no Indian languages.110 So,
Bennett’s point about weak/inefficient British officers to an extent
could be substantiated.
Lack of air support proved to be an important shortcoming for the
Allied war effort in the Far East. Qualitative and quantitative inferior-
ity in the Allied air assets enabled the Japanese to rule the skies and
they were able to make landfall at ease in areas and time of their own
choosing due to their command over the sea.111 In general, all the Com-
monwealth commanders agreed that the performance of the Japanese
aircraft and their pilots especially as regards high-level bombing came
as a surprise to them, suggesting that racism also shaped the way in
which the Japanese threat was assessed (and underestimated).112 Karl
Hack and Kevin Blackburn assert that Japanese air superiority sapped
the morale of the defenders. Japanese air supremacy also gave an edge
to their commanders in intelligence collection.113
Further, the British had no tanks to counter those of the Japanese.
At times, the appearance of Japanese tanks created a sense of psy-
chological despair among the Commonwealth troops. Many of the
Indian soldiers had never previously seen a tank. However, more than
the Japanese tanks, the Japanese infantry posed a greater threat to
the Commonwealth force. Against the innovative tactics of the daring
Japanese infantry, the Commonwealth infantry at this stage of the war
had no answer. Here, one finds a similarity with the so-called Small
Wars, where rather than mechanized technology, men on foot posed
far greater danger.
Poor morale of the imperial soldiers along with inferior tactics, use
of light tanks plus aerial superiority of the Japanese created a danger-
ous compound for the Commonwealth troops. Major H. P. Thomas
of the Indian Army at General A. P. Wavell’s order drew up a report
on Japanese tactics which was submitted on 30 May 1942. Thomas
noted: ‘Briefly, it consisted in locating the areas held and the flanks
by drawing fire, working round or through small parties, threatening
the road – the vital feature – and causing confusion by shooting from
unexpected directions.’114 An Indian officer offered much the same
appraisal of Japanese tactics: ‘they also made full use of small infil-
trations behind the lines, so as to interdict . . . convoys. They would
fire from flanking trees, at night, along a one-road approach, thereby
 The Indian Army in defeat 205
creating, generally, the impression among their opponents that they
had been cut-off from behind.’115 The Allied troops had no counter to
such Japanese combat techniques.
As the British Official History of the War in the Far East explained:

To troops unused to it, the jungle is apt to be terrifying and to

produce physical and emotional stresses which have to be felt to
be appreciated; rubber too, with its gloom, dampness and sound
deadening effect, gives them a feeling of isolation and tends to
lower their morale. The only antidote to jungle fear . . . is to give
troops the opportunity of learning sufficient jungle lore to enable
them to regard the jungle as a friend rather than an enemy, or at
least as a neutral, and to teach them how to operate efficiently in
the restricted visibility of the rubber plantations.116

Long before Kirby and his team, H. P. Thomas noted the inadequate
training of the British and Indian troops in the following words:

The first of the basic causes for our weakness in training was
the failure to realize in time that, to fight successfully in Malaya,
troops must undergo a highly specialized form of training. The
minimum period suggested by one authority for this training
was six months, the concurrent acclimatization of the man being
of course, almost as important as the lessons themselves. Even
allowing that exigencies of the war as a whole would permit of
only half this period being made available, could we have met the
situation?117

GOC Malaya Command realized that the culture of tactical training

of the Commonwealth troops was seriously flawed. As the campaign
unfolded, this became clearer to all concerned. On 15 January 1942,
GOC Malaya informed the War Office and Commander-in-Chief India
that to teach all concerned elements of tactics peculiar to Malaya new
units known as Jungle Warfare Training Teams were to be established.
On 25 January 1942 the War Office approved Percival’s scheme for
establishing a Jungle Warfare Training Team at Malaya.118 However, in
the last week of January 1941, such training could not be provided as
the defeated and dispirited Commonwealth troops retreated towards
the southern tip of Malaya with the Japanese in hot pursuit. Attempts
to redress the shortcomings were seriously disrupted when all hell
broke loose on the Commonwealth troops at ‘Fortress’ Singapore.
206 Kaushik Roy
Conclusion
Gilchrist’s claim that weakness at the top leadership resulted in the
failure of the Commonwealth troops at Malaya119 is only partly true,
as the Commonwealth troops were ‘soft’ indeed. Close-quarter com-
bat between infantry in the jungle terrain (including nocturnal com-
bat) set the format for ground combat in Malaya. The Australian,
British and the Indian officers all agreed that Japanese air superiority
resulted in lowering of morale of the defenders. However, in 1944
in France and Burma both the German and Japanese troops fought
doggedly in the face of Allied air superiority. Battle-hardened and
well-motivated troops could indeed go on fighting even when the hos-
tile party enjoyed air superiority. But, the Commonwealth troops in
Malaya in 1941 were raw, untrained and inexperienced. The British
commanders’ insistence on constructing fixed ground defences which
were outflanked and bypassed by the nimble Japanese infantry com-
pounded these problems. Some officers like Carpendale had identified
a more appropriate training regimen. But, there was neither time nor
proper infrastructure to allow for training the troops intensively in
such techniques. So, while there were sporadic ad hoc attempts by for-
mation commanders to tune in their troops as quickly as possible, in
the face attacks from the hardened IJA, such ad hoc measures proved
insufficient. The reality was that with raw troops at their disposal the
British officers had few options. Our account of combat in Malaya
shows that in mobile battles in the jungle country, the Commonwealth
troops were hopelessly outclassed and outmanoeuvred by the highly
mobile Japanese. Further, the Commonwealth commanders with raw,
untrained, not-so-well-motivated dispirited troops repeatedly failed to
hold the river crossings (including Slim and Muar) against the dynamic
and aggressive Japanese soldiers infused with high combat spirit.
The disastrous Malaya Campaign was the curtain raiser to the
greater humiliation at the surrender of Singapore. Intra-force mud-
slinging – notable in many contemporary accounts – provides little
insight. We can conclude that all the Commonwealth troops – Austral-
ians, British and Indians – displayed equal levels of proficiency. And
this level of proficiency fell far short of the cold professionalism of the
IJA. The IJA then was at the height of its power. Its tactical brilliance,
operational audacity and strategic masterstrokes became a model for
others to emulate. Inadequate tactics, training and doctrine bedevilled
the Commonwealth troops as they retreated to the Causeway and fell
back to the Island of Singapore.
 The Indian Army in defeat 207
Notes
1 Alan Warren, ‘The Indian Army and the Fall of Singapore’, in Brian Farrell
and Sandy Hunter (eds.), Sixty Years on: The Fall of Singapore Revisited
(Singapore: Academic Publishing, 2003), pp. 270–89.
2 T. R. Moreman, The Jungle, the Japanese and the British Commonwealth
Armies at War 1941–45: Fighting Methods, Doctrine and Training for
Jungle Warfare (London; New York: Frank Cass, 2005), see especially
pp. 13–14; Alan Jeffreys, ‘The Indian Army in the Malayan Campaign,
1941–1942’, in Rob Johnson (ed.), The British Indian Army: Virtue and
Necessity (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014),
pp. 177–97.
3 Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby with Capt. C. T. Addis, Colonel J. F.
Meiklejohn (succeeded by Brigadier M. R. Roberts), Colonel G. T. Wards
and Air Vice-Marshal N. L. Desoer, History of the Second World War,
The War Against Japan, vol. 1 (1957, reprint, Dehra Dun: Natraj, 1989),
pp. 153–4.
4 Brigadier Jasbir Singh, Combat Diary: An Illustrated History of Opera-
tions Conducted by 4th Battalion, the Kumaon Regiment, 1788 to 1974
(New Delhi: Lancer, 2010), p. 92.
5 K. D. Bhargava and K. N. V. Sastri, Campaigns in South-East Asia:
1941–42, in Bisheshwar Prasad (ed.), Official History of the Indian
Armed Forces in the Second World War: 1939–45 (New Delhi: Ministry
of Defence Government of India, 1960), p. 88.
6 Kirby et.al., The War Against Japan, vol. 1, p. 163.
7 Singh, Combat Diary, pp. 93–4.
8 A. B. Lodge, The Fall of General Gordon Bennett (Sydney: Allen &
Unwin, 1986), pp. 36, 49–50.
9 General Mohan Singh, Soldiers’ Contribution to Indian Independence
(New Delhi: Army Educational Stores, 1974), p. 45.
10 Singh, Combat Diary, p. 91.
11 Lieutenant General Harbakhsh Singh, In the Line of Duty: A Soldier
Remembers (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000), pp. 86, 88, 91.
12 Singh, Combat Diary, p. 93.
13 Major General Prem K. Khanna and Pushpindar Singh Chopra, Portrait
of Courage: Century of the 5th Battalion the Sikh Regiment (New Delhi:
Military Studies Convention, 2001), p. 157.
14 Brigadier W. Carpendale, Report on Operations of 11 Indian Division in
Kedah and Perak, p. 1, L/WS/1/952, India Office Records (IOR), British
Library (BL), London.
15 Ibid., p. 1.
16 Ibid., p. 1.
17 Ibid., p. 2.
18 Ibid., p. 2.
19 War Diary of the 9th Indian Division, Part 1, 553/5/22, Part 1, Appen-
dices 19 & 20, pp. 38–9, Australian War Memorial (AWM), Canberra,
Australia.
20 Carpendale, Report on Operations of 11 Indian Division in Kedah and
Perak, pp. 1–2.
208 Kaushik Roy
21 Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, Japan’s Greatest Victory, Britain’s Worst Defeat
from the Japanese Perspective: The Capture of Singapore, 1942, ed. by H.
V. Howe, tr. by Margaret E. Lake (1997, reprint, Gloucestershire: Spell-
mount, 2007), p. XVII.
22 Ian Morrison, Malayan Postscript (London: Faber and Faber, Mcmxliii), p. 78.
23 Notes on Japanese Warfare on the Malayan Front, Information Bulletin
No. 6 (Washington, DC: Military Intelligence Division, War Department,
1942), p. 3.
24 Lieutenant-Colonel Paul W. Thompson, ‘The Jap Army in Action: The
Fight for Malaya’, in Thompson, Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Doud and
Lieutenant John Scofield (eds.), How the Jap Army Fights (1942, reprint,
New York: Penguin Books, 1943). Information under Photo II.
25 Brian P. Farrell, The Defence and Fall of Singapore: 1940–42 (2005,
reprint, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2006), p. 137.
26 Notes on Japanese Warfare on the Malayan Front, Information Bulletin
No. 6, pp. 4–6.
27 Ibid., p. 8.
28 Farrell, The Defence and Fall of Singapore, pp. 135–6.
29 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, Operations in Malaya and Singapore, 30
May 1942, p. 4, CAB 66/26/44, Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, London.
30 Kirby et.al., The War Against Japan, vol. 1, p. 156; Clifford Kinvig, ‘Gen-
eral Percival and the Fall of Singapore’, in Farrell and Hunter (eds.), Sixty
Years on, p. 245.
31 Hisayuki Yokoyama, ‘Air Operational Leadership in the Southern Front:
Imperial Army Aviation’s Trial to be an “Air Force” in the Malaya Offen-
sive Air Operation’, in Brian Bond and Kyoichi Tachikawa (eds.), British
and Japanese Military Leadership in the Far Eastern War: 1941–45 (Oxon:
Frank Cass, 2004), p. 141; Tsuji, Japan’s Greatest Victory, Britain’s Worst
Defeat from the Japanese Perspective, p. 28; Japanese Monograph No. 24,
History of the Southern Army, p. 9.
32 Despatch on the Far East, by Air Chief Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham, 8
September 1942, Appendix O, p. 72, CAB 66/28/33, PRO, Kew, London.
33 Ibid., Appendix M, p. 71.
34 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 7.
35 Bhargava and Sastri, Campaigns in South-East Asia: 1941–42, p. 97.
36 Ibid., p. 107.
37 Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn, Did Singapore Have to Fall? Churchill
and the Impregnable Fortress (2004, reprint, Oxon: Routledge, 2008),
pp. 54–5.
38 Andrew Gilchrist, Malaya 1941: The Fall of a Fighting Empire (London:
Robert Hale, 1992), pp. 119, 129.
39 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 5.
40 Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival, ‘Operations of Malaya Command from
8 December 1941 to 15 February 1942’, Second Supplement to the Lon-
don Gazette, No. 38215, 20 February 1948, p. 1268.
41 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 5.
42 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 3; Bhargava and Sastri,
Campaigns in South-East Asia: 1941–42, p. 110.
43 Bhargava and Sastri, Campaigns in South-East Asia: 1941–42, p. 110.
44 Khanna and Chopra, Portrait of Courage, p. 156.
 The Indian Army in defeat 209
45 Singh, In the Line of Duty, p. 91.
46 Khanna and Chopra, Portrait of Courage, pp. 156–7.
47 Percival, ‘Operations of Malay Command from 8 December 1941 to 15
February 1942’, pp. 1269–70.
48 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 5.
49 Akashi Yoji, ‘General Yamashita Tomoyuki: Commander of the Twenty-
Fifth Army’, in Farrell and Hunter (eds.), Sixty Years on, p. 191.
50 Bhargava and Sastri, Campaigns in South-East Asia: 1941–42, p. 108.
51 Percival, ‘Operations of Malay Command from 8 December 1941 to 15
February 1942’, p. 1269; Hack and Blackburn, Did Singapore Have to
Fall?, pp. 43–4.
52 Hack and Blackburn, Did Singapore Have to Fall?, p. 42.
53 Percival, ‘Operations of Malay Command from 8 December 1941 to 15
February 1942’, p. 1269.
54 Kirby et al., The War Against Japan, vol. 1, p. 203.
55 Khanna and Chopra, Portrait of Courage, pp. 158–9.
56 Percival, ‘Operations of Malay Command from 8 December 1941 to 15
February 1942’, p. 1271; Kirby et al., The War Against Japan, vol. 1, p. 204.
57 Percival, ‘Operations of Malay Command from 8 December 1941 to 15
February 1942’, p. 1270.
58 Ibid., pp. 1270–1.
59 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 4.
60 Khanna and Chopra, Portrait of Courage, p. 160.
61 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 5.
62 Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival, The War in Malaya (1949, reprint,
Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1957), p. 191.
63 Ibid., p. 193.
64 Khanna and Chopra, Portrait of Courage, p. 161.
65 Percival, The War in Malaya, p. 189.
66 Kirby et al., The War Against Japan, vol. 1, pp. 272–3.
67 Singh, Combat Diary, p. 112.
68 Michael Dockrill, ‘British Leadership in Air Operations: Malaya and
Burma’, in Bond and Tachikawa (eds.), British and Japanese Military
Leadership in the Far Eastern War, p. 124.
69 Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, Australia in the War of 1939–45,
Series One, Army, vol. 4 (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1957), p. 224.
70 Account of the Malaya Campaign by Captain F. E. Mileham, 4/9th Jat
Regiment, Road to Malacca, D1196/33, IOR, BL, London.
71 Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, p. 222.
72 Ibid., pp. 222–4.
73 Ibid., pp. 224–5.
74 Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War, 1941–1945 (London:
Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 237.
75 Hack and Blackburn, Did Singapore Have to Fall?, pp. 77, 79.
76 DSD to R. M. Lockhart, New Delhi, 16 January 1942, L/WS/1/74, IOR,
BL, London.
77 Carl Bridge, ‘Crisis of Command: Major-General Gordon Bennett and
British Military Effectiveness in the Malayan Campaign, 1941–42’, in
Bond and Tachikawa (eds.), British and Japanese Military Leadership in
the Far Eastern War, p. 64.
210 Kaushik Roy
78 Tsuji, Japan’s Greatest Victory, Britain’s Worst Defeat from the Japanese
Perspective, pp. XIX, 12.
79 Gilchrist, Malaya 1941, p. 63.
80 Ong Chit Chung, ‘Major-General William Dobbie and the Defence of
Malaya, 1935–38’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 17, no. 2
(1986), pp. 282–3.
81 Carl Bridge, ‘The Malayan Campaign, 1941–42, in International Per-
spective’, in Nick Smart (ed.), The Second World War (Hampshire: Ash-
gate, 2006), p. 97.
82 Singh, Combat Diary, pp. 92–3.
83 Singh, In the Line of Duty, pp. 93–4.
84 Kyoichi Tachikawa, ‘General Yamashita and His Style of Leadership’, in
Bond and Tachikawa (eds.), British and Japanese Military Leadership in
the Far Eastern War, p. 79.
85 Ibid., p. 81.
86 Raymond Callahan, ‘Churchill and Singapore’, in Farrell and Hunter
(eds.), Sixty Years on, p. 171.
87 Warren, ‘The Indian Army and the Fall of Singapore’, in Farrell and
Hunter (eds.), Sixty Years on, p. 272.
88 Letter to Major-General S.T. Rowell from Colonel J. R. Broadbent,
28 January 1942, Gordon Bennett Papers, PR90/111, Australian War
Memorial (AWM), Canberra.
89 Telegram from CGS Australia to War Office, The Malayan Campaign,
War Cabinet, 4 April 1942, pp. 1–2, CAB 66/23/25, PRO, Kew.
90 Morrison, Malayan Postscript, p. 78.
91 Telegram from CGS Australia to War Office, The Malayan Campaign,
War Cabinet, 4 April 1942, p. 2.
92 Ibid., p. 2.
93 Ibid., p. 2.
94 Letter to Rowell from Broadbent, 28 January 1942, Gordon Bennett
Papers, p. 1.
95 Ibid., p. 1.
96 Ibid., pp. 1–2.
97 Farrell, The Defence and Fall of Singapore, pp. 131, 134.
98 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, Appendix A, p. 20.
99 Telegram from CGS Australia to War Office, The Malayan Campaign,
War Cabinet, 4 April 1942, p. 2.
100 Singh, In the Line of Duty, p. 90.
101 Kinvig, ‘General Percival and the Fall of Singapore’, in Farrell and Hunter
(eds.), Sixty Years on, p. 244.
102 Singh, In the Line of Duty, p. 91.
103 Sibylla Jane Flower, ‘Allied Prisoners of War: The Malayan Campaign,
1941–42’, in Farrell and Hunter (eds.), Sixty Years on, p. 209.
104 Notes on Japanese Warfare on the Malayan Front, Information Bulletin
No. 6, p. 8.
105 Singh, Soldiers’ Contribution to Indian Independence, pp. 65–6.
106 Ibid., p. 66.
107 History of the 11th Indian Division in Malaya, Comments by Lieutenant-
General A. E. Percival, Percival Papers, Imperial War Museum, London.
 The Indian Army in defeat 211
108 From GOC Malaya to the War Office, C-in-C India, 28885, cipher 25/1,
p. 69, L/WS/1/645, IOR, BL.
109 DSD to R. M. Lockhart, New Delhi, 16 January 1942, pp. 2, 5,
L/WS/1/74.
110 Gilchrist, Malaya 1941, p. 24.
111 Telegram from CGS Australia to War Office, The Malayan Campaign,
War Cabinet, 4 April 1942, p. 2.
112 Percival, ‘Operations of Malay Command from 8 December 1941 to
15 February 1942’, p. 1269.
113 Hack and Blackburn, Did Singapore Have to Fall?, p. 79.
114 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 5.
115 Singh, In the Line of Duty, p. 96.
116 Kirby et al., The War Against Japan, vol. 1, p. 164.
117 Report by Major H. P. Thomas, 30 May 1942, p. 13.
118 From GOC Malaya to the War Office, C-in-C India, 28428 cipher 14/1,
15 January 1942, War Office to GOC Malaya, 66278 cipher SD3 23/1,
pp. 68, 70, L/WS/1/645.
119 Gilchrist, Malaya 1941, p. 161.
9 Churchill, the Indian Army and
The Second World War1
Cat Wilson

Few eyebrows are raised when a politician’s memoir diverts attention

away from his (or her) least finest hours in office. The combination of
Churchill’s enviable literary skill and his almost untouchable post-war
reputation, however, meant his six-volume memoir, The Second World
War, became so revered that it took on the guise of genuine historical
narrative.2 Consequently, any subject which he either skilfully avoided
or deemed insignificant became almost lost within the shadows of
history. Along with subjects such as the irreversible loss of the Brit-
ish Empire’s prestige in the Far East for example, or the volatile and
transient nature of Anglo-American relations, or the role of Bomber
Command in the strategic air defensive, Churchill ‘largely evaded’ the
subject of the Indian Army in his memoir.3 Subsumed within his wider
account of the war, and his role in it, Churchill conveniently side-
stepped the achievements of the Indian Army in order to help expedite
his one remaining political ambition – his return to 10 Downing Street
as Prime Minister of a peacetime Britain.4
Over the course of the Second World War, the Indian Army had, in
the main, and despite its lack of resources, training and preparedness,
become a formidable fighting unit.5 A month before the outbreak of
war, one Indian Infantry Brigade (the 11th) had left India for Egypt
illustrating its readiness as a physical presence. Battles were hard
fought and lessons were equally hard learnt but, by February 1945,
the Indian Army was described as ‘a match for the equivalent forma-
tions of any first-class power’.6 A little over a decade earlier, Church-
ill had not been alone in thinking that the Indian Army, particularly
the individual sepoy, needed ‘a white officer among them when fight-
ing’ to inspire and guide them to victory.7 His lack of regard for the
Indian Army seemed not to dissipate, for during the disastrous and
arguably pivotal year of 1942 he accused Wavell (in a private con-
versation) of ‘creating a Frankenstein by putting modern weapons in
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 213
the hands of sepoys’.8 Clearly Churchill associated the Indian Army
with an ever-present threat of mutiny. After the war had ended and
the Indian Army’s reputation had been transformed, Churchill began
to compose his memoirs. Yet, he downplayed the Indian Army’s con-
tribution to the British Empire’s victory (especially in Burma and the
Far East) and continued to perpetuate his turn-of-the-century distrust
of the sepoy – who may have fought hard in Italy and in Burma, for
example, but had really, in Churchill’s view, only been good enough to
guard captured Italian soldiers (who were the weakest of all soldiers
according to Churchill’s hierarchy of troops).9 This chapter examines
Churchill’s portrayal of the Indian Army, as set-out in his memoir The
Second World War, and considers not only why, in effect, he ignored
the largest volunteer force ever amassed but also the extent to which
his narrative influenced history.

Churchill as writer, historian and memoirist

Churchill’s political career spanned over half a century, but his first
profession was that of a war correspondent and writer.10 He saw writ-
ing as a way of increasing his disposable income, as well as proselyt-
izing his opinions. In 1895, five years before he entered the House of
Commons for the first time, Churchill honed his literary skills as a
war correspondent in Cuba’s war for independence against the United
States of America. A year later he covered the British reconquest of
the Sudan, and it was in his first volume of edited war correspond-
ence, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode in Frontier
War, that Churchill introduced his readership to the Indian Army – in
this instance, the Rattray Sikhs. One passage of vivid prose deserves
repeating:

The band of Sikhs were closely packed in the cutting, the front
rank kneeling to fire. Nearly all were struck by stones and rocks.
Major Taylor, displaying great gallantry, was mortally wounded.
Several of the Sepoys were killed. Colonel McRae himself was
accidentally stabbed in the neck by a bayonet and became covered
with blood. But he called upon the men to maintain the good
name of ‘Rattray Sikhs’ and to hold their position till death or the
regiment came up. And the soldiers replied by loudly shouting the
Sikh war-cry, and defying the enemy to come on.11

Churchill noted how Subedar Syed Ahmed Shah defended his post to
the bitter end and whose ‘gallant conduct on this occasion’ was the
214 Cat Wilson
subject of a special paragraph in despatches.12 Similarly he pointed
out how Sepoy Prem Singh would risk his life every day to come out
through a tiny porthole in a tower, under constant enemy fire, so that
he could establish his heliograph and send urgent messages to the main
force.13 Perhaps Churchill waxed lyrical about the valour and bravery
of a handful of Indian troops because at this point in his career he had
no great political axe to grind. India was still very much under the
Raj, India’s future remained at the heart of the British Empire and the
Indian Army was governed and led, not by Indians, but by the British.
All was, in Churchill’s opinion, just as it should be. His commentaries
and articles were, in the main, favourably received, and Churchill was
clearly ‘thrilled’ at having found ‘a new way of making a living and
of asserting’ himself.14 Having become the most highly paid war cor-
respondent of his time, Churchill was spurred on by his literary suc-
cess and became quite a prolific writer. Not content with journalistic
commentaries he also penned a novel but quickly gravitated towards
works of a historical nature.15
In 1906, Churchill published a two-volume biography on his late
father, Lord Randolph Churchill, written with the determined aim
of silencing his father’s detractors.16 While not entirely successful in
his remit, Churchill did at least dispel some of the harsher criticisms
which had been levelled at Lord Randolph. One reviewer wrote that
Churchill’s biography would ‘have to be read – nay, even more than
read – it would have to be carefully studied by all’ who wished to
be ‘well versed’ in British political history of the latter part of the
nineteenth century.17 That being said, as John Lukacs noted, as a
vindication of his father’s reputation Lord Randolph Churchill did
not succeed, but as a great political history it did.18 Churchill’s most
forceful encounter with history, however, was his multi-volume nar-
rative on the First World War – The World Crisis.19 Even though
Churchill exhibited concern for those in the trenches – perhaps due
to his own stint at the front – inaccuracies and distortions occurred
throughout the five volumes, and Churchill continually aggran-
dized his own role. So much so that Arthur Balfour (the Conserva-
tive British Prime Minister 1902–05), described The World Crisis as
Churchill’s autobiography disguised as world history.20 Indeed, but
as Churchill’s narrative on the Great War was quick off the mark it
encountered little immediate competition. Even though some reviews
were less than generous, it was written in a fluid and easy-to-read
style, and Churchill succeeded in simplifying the chaotic history of
the outbreak of war.
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 215
Churchill’s most assured historical work was an account of his ances-
tor, entitled Marlborough: His Life and Times.21 Determined ‘from the
first to make the best case he could’ for Marlborough, the exclusive
access to papers and documents in the muniment room at Blenheim Pal-
ace helped Churchill establish a cohesive historical tale.22 In fact, Mar-
lborough was more than a political biography of his ancestor; it was
Churchill’s pronouncement on ‘how the harsh and excessive demands
of the victors’ had ‘produced innumerable and unforeseen consequences
for the defeated nations’.23 In other words, Marlborough was Church-
ill’s warning from history – it was his indictment of the consequences of
the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. His Marlborough was highly successful,
received ‘critical acclaim’ and resulted in Churchill being made an hon-
orary Vice-President of the Royal Historical society in 1936.24
Combining his pre-war success as a writer and his reputation as an
historian, with his wartime record, and the fact that no other officially
sanctioned history of the war had yet to be produced, it is no wonder
that Churchill’s memoir of the Second World War was perceived as the
most authoritative historical narrative.25 Rather modestly, or perhaps
disingenuously, Churchill claimed that his six-volume memoir was not
history – rather it was ‘a contribution to history’ which would ‘be of
service to the future’.26 In the late 1960s, the Cambridge historian John
Harold Plumb astutely wrote that Churchill had deliberately ‘organ-
ized’ the narrative and structure of the war to reflect and magnify his
own role ‘in the drama’.27 Plumb observed that the ‘phases of the war’
which Churchill constructed in order to aid the flow of his memoirs had
primarily reflected his importance and exaggerated his centrality to the
Allied war effort. While Plumb did not openly state that the post-war
Churchill placed his wartime self at the epicentre of international politi-
cal and diplomatic events in order to garner support for his campaign
to return to 10 Downing Street as a peacetime Prime Minister, it was
implied. The result of Churchill’s structure, Plumb contended, was that
it so effectively cut through the ‘confusion and complexity’ of the war
that it had already begun to influence historians who found themselves
being steered down the self-serving ‘broad avenues’ which Churchill had
laid down.28 Plumb concluded that ‘Churchill the historian’ was ‘at the
very heart of all historiography of the Second World War’, and would
always remain there.29 Plumb’s critique is as pertinent today, as it was
then. Though the historiography has progressed apace, and Churchill’s
memoir no longer operates in a vacuum, the effect that Churchill’s his-
torical narrative had on the Indian Army’s contribution to the Second
World War was particularly damning and its effect long-lasting.
216 Cat Wilson
Churchill’s World Crisis and the Indian Army
Churchill’s opinion of Indian troops originated from his experience
in Bangalore, as a subaltern in the Queen’s Hussars at the turn of the
century, through to his time in the trenches during the Great War, and
then during his first time as the King’s first minister. He would go from
either emphatically supporting or completely disparaging the sepoy.
Whether publicly or privately expressed, his thoughts and opinions
seem to switch from one to the other – rarely did he reach and occupy
a middle ground on this subject – and his judgement nearly always
reflected the way in which he rallied against the ongoing proposal
for Indian self-government. In his memoir of the Second World War,
Churchill introduced the Indian Army to his readership by narrating
how, during the First World War, ‘the steadfast Indian Corps in the
cruel winter of 1914, held the line by Armentieres’.30 Indian troops
had often (but not always) served with distinction in the trenches on
the Western Front, in Mesopotamia, and each of the major theatres
of the First World War.31 Within four days of Britain declaring war
on Germany, on 4 August 1914, two infantry divisions and a cavalry
brigade of the Indian Army were ordered to mobilize; eventually a
total of 23 Indian infantry battalions and 14 Indian cavalry regiments
served on the front.32 Indian troops were fighting a war in a territory
which was far removed climactically as well as geographically and
culturally from their own.
Churchill had previously written about the Indian troops in the
Great War in his narrative The World Crisis, how their mobilization
primarily created a logistical problem as troops removed from India
would have to be replaced by territorial troops in order to maintain
India’s internal and frontier security. The implication being that Indian
troops were effective if used to police the frontiers of India, but less
so when transplanted into unfamiliar regions of the British Empire.
Nonetheless, Churchill knew what the Indian Army was capable of
and what it had achieved in the previous conflict.
Churchill’s memoir of the Second World War would have been,
for many, the first and most assured historical narrative which they
encountered. While crystallizing the reasons for the gathering storm
clouds of war (as well as his own role within the conflict), and giving
a lucid and arguably palatable interpretation of the events of the war
itself, Churchill’s memoir may have encouraged some to think of the
war not just as Britain’s part in defeating Nazism, but the larger Brit-
ish Empire’s role and therefore the part played by various imperial
subjects. Not simply the Dominions, and their troops, but India, and
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 217
perhaps, Africa and their respective troops. Churchill may have writ-
ten more about Indian troops in the Great War in his World Crisis but,
even though The World Crisis had sold some 58,334 volumes by 1933
(with further sales of 5,844 for the abridged edition), it could not com-
pare with the gravitas of his voice, his reputation or the sales figures
of the first volume of The Second World War (that which contained
his brief and cursory mention of the Indian troops at Armentieres).33
Sales from these volumes eclipsed anything he had ever written and
as a result of high sales (and extensive serialisation) his historical nar-
rative would have undoubtedly shaped and formed public opinion –
especially as no official histories of the war had yet been published.34
His version of events, and his portrayal of the key protagonists, when
combined with his literary skills and his considerable post-war reputa-
tion (which he of course enhanced through the memoirs themselves),
were accepted with little criticism. Arguably, it was possibly the first
time that the majority had even thought about the role the soldiers
of the British Empire – the Indian Army (let alone other Colonial or
Dominion troops) – had played within the world war. While Church-
ill’s brief mention of the sepoys in the trenches at Armentieres could
be described as both timely and adequate, especially considering the
sheer amount of content which he and his team of researchers had
to cram into the first scene-setting volume, the question as to why he
barely glanced at the Indian Army’s participation in the Second World
War in his memoirs remains. An examination of his own experience
of India, and his inability to separate his view of India from his view
of the Indian Army, may go some way to explaining why he virtually
ignored the largest volunteer force every assembled.
Churchill developed a ‘curious complex’ about India when he had
been a subaltern in the Queen’s Hussars, stationed in Bangalore, from
1896 to 1899.35 Although commissioned for three years, Churchill
spent no more than a total of 10 to 12 months in India, as he made
his various sorties as a war correspondent and several trips back to
London to break up what he called the ennui of continental military
life.36 Throughout his time in India, Churchill had been more con-
cerned with the prestige his position as a cavalry man offered, and
the advantages it might lend to a political career, rather than what he
could learn about the Indian Army, or India itself. Churchill refused
to learn vernacular languages, which he pronounced as ‘quite unnec-
essary’, even though it meant he could not understand the ‘thoughts
and feelings’ of the Indian troops which he encountered.37 But many
British officers in India shared this attitude and, as Churchill’s unit
did not include any Indian ranks, learning Urdu (the lingua franca of
218 Cat Wilson
the Indian Army) was not therefore, in the Bangalore Cantonment at
least, thought of as particularly urgent or necessary.38 A language bar-
rier, however, did not prevent Churchill from believing that he could
effectively communicate with the Indian ranks he encountered: ‘there
was no doubt they liked having a white officer among them, when
fighting . . . they watched him carefully to see how things were going.
If you grinned, they grinned. So I grinned industriously.’39 This obser-
vation may first have been made by a young Churchill during his time
in India, but it was written by an older Churchill and published in
1930. Tellingly, it revealed how his attitude towards the Indian Army
had hardly changed in the intervening years.

Churchill’s Second World War and the Indian Army

In his memoir of the Second World War, Churchill’s depiction of the
Indian Army varied to meet the needs of his narrative. For example,
he portrayed them as a potentially disloyal and volatile force when
justifying why he had not met the wartime demands (made by the
Left in Britain, Congress in India or Roosevelt and American anti-Brit-
ish imperialist opinion) for negotiating post-war self-government for
India. He maintained that wartime was ‘no time for a constitutional
experiment’ as it would have politicized and therefore destabilized the
Indian troops who were serving not just the Allied war effort but also
protecting the Indian population from Japanese invasion.40 Consti-
tutional change for India during wartime would have a detrimental
effect on the Indian Army’s ability to fight, Churchill continued, as
the Indian Army would have disintegrated into ‘a welter of chattering
politics and bloody ruin’.41 Yet although Churchill was writing after
the war had ended, and after the pivotal event of Indian independence
and the horrors of Partition, he still depicted what had been, at least
in the Far East, Burma and North Africa, an arguably crucial body of
troops as inherently untrustworthy and fickle in their allegiance. He
may have needed to portray himself to his post-war audience as able
to withstand the wartime onslaught of American anti-imperialism, in
order reinforce his standing and relevance to the post-war world, but
he did so at the expense of the Indian Army.
India experienced a series of crises from 1942 to 1943 – not only
the failed Cripps Mission and the resultant Quit India campaign but
also the Bengal Famine and the search for a new Viceroy. In order to
keep the Indian troops depoliticized, attempts were made to insulate
them from these events. Postal censorship, the dissemination of Allied
war-effort propaganda through the use of mobile film units and radio
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 219
programmes, and only allowing British newspapers in army camps
were measures thought to help in this regard.42 The Bengal Famine
was one particular crisis which Churchill avoided in his memoirs.
General A. Wavell, the reluctant Viceroy of India, had called in Indian
troops to help distribute what rations were available, as well as to
sort out distribution centres and transport deficiencies.43 Undoubt-
edly disturbed by what they witnessed these troops, upon returning
to their regiments, may have possibly been more susceptible to Japa-
nese propaganda and may have questioned why they were fighting
for the Empire and not against it.44 How could an Indian soldier who
was ‘eroded by anxieties about whether his wife and children had
enough to eat’ continue to be loyal, or continue to fight and defeat the
enemy?45 Had Churchill revealed in his memoirs how his indifference
towards the starving Bengali population had jeopardized the loyalty of
the Indian Army, it would have shown that his reasoning to Roosevelt
(over why he had placed an embargo on raising the Indian constitu-
tional issue during the war so as not to affect the loyalty or effective-
ness of the Indian Army) had merely been a pretence – a delaying
tactic. Since Churchill wanted to return to power, and the Cold War
necessitated that Anglo-American relations run smoothly, he needed
to downplay, if not completely omit, the reality of his role in finding
a solution to the Bengal Famine and his low expectation of the Indian
Army’s reaction.46
The advent of the Indian National Army (to which Churchill alludes
only once in his memoirs, and even then it is tucked away in an Appen-
dix), the impact of Japanese anti-British Empire propaganda (much
of which featured Churchill very prominently) and the horrors of the
Bengal Famine might well have swayed the loyalty of the Indian Army.
But, as noted earlier, by 1945, the Indian Army was deemed by many
to never have ‘been so trusted’.47 The belief in the superiority of the
British soldier over the Indian soldier proved itself to be outmoded
and mistaken. ‘Gone were the days’, one historian has written, ‘when
it had been supposed that the example of British troops was needed
to fire Indians to valour’.48 There were pockets of disloyalty and of
dissent, and until mid-1942, the Indian Army proved itself to be both
‘brittle and conditional’ in its affections.49 Yet better material supply,
equipment, training and the increase in concern for their families, how-
ever, meant that by 1944 the loyalty of the jawans (Indian privates) to
their commissioned officers was not questioned (by their officers or by
themselves). It was following demobilization, and the loss of regular
pay, that the majority of jawans became politically aware – that is to
say nationalist. It was probably the politicization of soldiers which
220 Cat Wilson
Churchill had feared when he took Wavell to one side, in 1942, and
called them nothing more than an armed Frankenstein monster.
It should be noted that Churchill was equally disparaging towards
African brigades and viewed them with a similar suspicion.50 In a
memo addressed to Ismay but marked for the attention of Wavell,
Churchill wrote that he was not satisfied by the part played by the
African brigades who were stationed in Kenya. Churchill viewed
indigenous troops as inferior to British troops, as inferior to the Aus-
tralian and New Zealand soldiers whom he thought were, in turn,
below the standard of the British troops. He also wrote that such
‘native’ troops were to be mixed together ‘so that one lot can be used
to keep the other in discipline’.51 There was a hierarchy of troops in
Churchill’s mind – a definite pecking order with British officers and
British men at the top. Without exception, in the first two volumes of
The Second World War, Churchill intimated that Indian troops (like
the ‘native’ colonial African soldiers) were not to be trusted. They
were ill-disciplined, inefficient and not as professional as their British
counterparts.
It was in the fourth volume of memoirs, first published in 1951,
a month after he succeeded in his triumphant return to 10 Downing
Street, that Churchill made the first noticeable distinction between the
British Army and the Indian Army. Up to this point in his memoir,
he had described the Indian Army as the ‘British-Indian Army’, using
what Raymond Callahan perfectly described as a ‘clumsy locution’.52
Churchill’s use of the term ‘British-Indian Army’ spoke volumes about
what he thought of the Indian Army, even if his writing did not.
For Churchill, the Indian Army was essentially British, albeit that it
included Indian soldiers. In fact, whenever Churchill wrote ‘British-
Indian Army’ what he was really referring to was the British-officered
Indian Army of which he had been a part, when stationed in Banga-
lore at the end of the nineteenth century. In his memoirs, Churchill
became consistently inconsistent when referring to the Indian Army
and this annoyed some members of his research team. General Henry
Pownall, who became one of the most trusted members of Churchill’s
literary research team (otherwise known as the ‘syndicate’), was par-
ticularly scathing about such inconsistencies (Churchill interchanging
the term Indian Army for British-Indian Army and vice versa) when
he lamented how Churchill’s ‘British-Indian Division phrase is rather
a bore really’. Pownall continued that Churchill only remembered
‘now and again’ that it was his ‘own hobby horse’, his own obses-
sion with India and the Raj, which he kept falling off. Called upon to
verify facts, write drafts and tidy-up tracts of text on military matters,
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 221
Pownall found that there were so many of these inconsistencies that he
became exasperated and ‘weary of chasing them up’.53
Churchill was not the only person to unrelentingly think of the
Indian Army as the British-Indian Army during the war, but he was
one of the few who appeared unable to alter his attitude in the post-
war, and post–Indian independence, world. Churchill was disparaging
about the ill-prepared state of the Indian Army at the outbreak of
the Second World War – as were others. Most notably British Com-
manding Officers posted in the Middle and Far East, such as Pownall,
Auchinleck, and Slim, shared Churchill’s views about the state of
unreadiness of the Indian troops, at the beginning of the Burma cam-
paigns. Even Pownall, who was himself considered less progressive
than Auchinleck for example, soon reversed his opinion of them.54 By
contrast, Churchill’s negative mindset was still apparent when writing
his memoirs in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The relative ease with which Japanese troops had invaded and
occupied Burma shocked Churchill. Yet, as Pownall commented in
his diary in December 1941, it was hardly surprising that Burma had
crumbled so easily for defence arrangements there had been ‘sketchy,
to put it mildly’.55 For Churchill, Burma was little more than a geo-
graphical buffer zone which protected India from foreign invasion.
But even more galling for Churchill than Burma’s fall was the fact
that the Allied ‘victory over the Japanese [in Burma] was won by the
Indian Army’.56 From March to May 1944, some of the fiercest battles
against the Japanese were being fought. The aim of the Japanese offen-
sive, U-GO, was to destroy British and Indian forces around Kohima
and Imphal, advance up the Dimapur pass and forge ahead across
India. Churchill allocated less than two pages to his descriptions of
the battles for Imphal and Kohima.57 He mentioned the 5th and 7th
Indian Divisions and how they were flown into Imphal and Dimapur
respectively. He wrote how the 33rd Corps, under General Stopford’s
command, along with the 2nd British Division, and the remnants of
Wingate’s Chindits, were also sent to Dimapur. Churchill was equally
scant regarding the battle of Kohima, to which he devoted a similar-
sized paragraph. The 2nd British Division, along with the 161st Indian
Brigade, relieved the Kohima Garrison, and Churchill ended his nar-
rative by writing that the ‘valiant defence of Kohima against all odds,
was a fine episode’.58
Churchill briefly mentioned eight individual British, Indian or Nep-
alese units. Nor did Churchill mention Slim’s 14th Army. Churchill
also mistook the units of the 2nd Indian Division for units of the 2nd
British Division. Even though Churchill wrote how, back in London,
222 Cat Wilson
he had ‘felt the stress’ of how ‘sixty thousand British and Indian sol-
diers, with all their modern equipment, were confined’ to these two
battlefields, it equated to no more than four paragraphs.59 He then
reverted to describing American successes, such as Stilwell’s manipula-
tion of Chinese forces, especially of Chiang Kai-Shek, as well as the
exploits of Merrill’s Marauders. He finished this brief chapter on the
beginning of the reconquest of Burma by quoting Mountbatten, who
wrote that ‘the Japanese bid for India was virtually over, and ahead lay
the prospect of the first major British victory in Burma’.60 As always,
when Churchill was recollecting an uncomfortable truth, he did not
use his own words to express a reality which, for whatever reason, he
found difficult to accept.
The phrase ‘forgotten army’ is now widely used to refer to Slim’s
14th Army as they not only received little in the way of equipment
and supplies but also seemed to be ‘neglected by both London and
Washington’.61 Slim’s army was also forgotten, or at least glossed over,
by the British public during the war. In The Times ‘Review of the year’
for 1942, the British public read how the Japanese had attacked Pearl
Harbor and how America had been officially brought into the war.
The general public read how ‘the Japanese did not pause, but turned at
once to attack Burma’ and how the Russian, Mediterranean and Mid-
dle Eastern war theatres had seen heavy fighting. The North African
campaigns, the Russian resistance to the German offensive, the George
Cross awarded to the Maltese for their ‘heroism and devotion’ were
all mentioned; but even though 1942 was the year in which the British
Empire in the Far East suffered its worst defeats, there was no men-
tion of specific army units fighting the Japanese in Malaya, Singapore
or Burma.62 The 8th Army received several mentions, as did Alexan-
der, Wavell and the American troops. But, no mention was made of
the armies fighting in Burma, let alone any specific mention of Indian
troops. Churchill maintained this silence in his memoirs.
Without doubt, Churchill did not include Slim and the achievements
of the 14th Army in his fourth volume of memoirs, due to the usual
rush, and general disorganization, of getting the proofs to the pub-
lishers.63 Yet, perhaps Churchill did not include the troops in Burma
because they had, after all, to use Slim’s phrase, turned defeat into
victory, with very little help (compared to the other theatres of war).64
To include them by name, to remember the forgotten, would likely
have required Churchill to revise his opinion of Indian troops. This,
it appears, was something which he was not prepared to do. In Sep-
tember 1952, following publication of the fifth volume of Churchill’s
memoirs, Slim confronted Churchill over the omission. Churchill was
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 223
only too happy to inform him that the 14th Army would get its due
credit within the final volume of his memoirs which at that time was
still being hastily researched and drafted by the syndicate.65 Churchill’s
accommodation may reflect the fact that, by 1952, Slim was not a man
anyone could easily ignore. In 1948, Clement Attlee had ensured that
Slim succeeded Montgomery as Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
and in November 1952 Slim was offered the Governor Generalship of
Australia (a post he held for seven years).
In a handful of instances, Churchill acknowledged the successes of
the Indian Army and singled it out for praise. In early 1941, he wrote
that ‘His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom gratefully rec-
ognise the valiant contribution which Indian troops have made to the
Imperial victories in North Africa’.66 But, such instances were few and
far between and were more public relation exercises for furthering
support, especially in India, rather than genuine offers of praise or
thanks. Another example was when Churchill agreed that there ‘must
be no discrimination on grounds of race or colour’ in the employment
of Indians or other colonial subjects in the Royal Navy. He suggested
that ‘each case must be judged on its merits’ and, while he could not
see ‘any objection to Indians serving on H.M. Ships where they are
qualified and needed, or, if their virtues so deserve, rising to be Admi-
rals of the Fleet’, he did conclude with ‘but not too many of them
please’.67
In January 1944, Churchill drafted a message to be published in the
first edition of the South East Asia Command newspaper. The message
included his ‘best wishes’ for the success of the paper and stated that
‘soldiers of the 14th Army as well as sailors and airmen now serving
under Admiral Mountbatten have already won for themselves distinc-
tion in battle’. He encouraged the men to think about the ‘great issues’
which lay ‘in their hands’; about how they would ‘acquit themselves
with the audacity, the valour and the resourcefulness’ which Britain
required.68 While Churchill acknowledged and encouraged the men
of the 14th Army in this message, it must be noted that in the follow-
ing two months, he also drafted similarly encouraging messages to
General de Gaulle (on the success of the French troops near Cassino),
to the National Farmers Union and to the National Savings Commit-
tee.69 All of which indicate that the 14th Army, and its Indian troops,
were lauded as a special force by Churchill but only when it suited his
purpose to do so.70
The bulk of the evidence suggests that Churchill retained a low opin-
ion of the Indian Army, even after the successes of 1944–5. Further evi-
dence of his disregard for the Indian Army exists within the documents
224 Cat Wilson
which relate to the production of the memoir itself – especially within
the directives and messages exchanged between himself and various
members of his research team. In one of the chapter proofs, for exam-
ple, one of Churchill’s draft sentences read: ‘so far the Japanese have
only had two white battalions and a few gunners against them, the rest
being Indian soldiers.’ Denis Kelly, an unenthusiastic lawyer whom
Churchill had employed in 1947 as a literary assistant and who was
far more than the self-confessed ‘stooge’ of the syndicate, rightly sur-
mised that such a sentence would ‘be read as a reflection on the Indian
Army’, and that it would be better to ‘delete the words “the rest being
Indian soldiers”’.71 Churchill later agreed. This is just one example of
the syndicate trying to protect Churchill from himself, and it was done
in the usual manner: by suggesting that the alteration was necessary
in order for Churchill’s contemporary concerns to be unaffected by
previous occurrences. Other similar examples illustrate how his origi-
nal wording was interpreted by the syndicate (especially by Pownall)
as being overtly critical of Indian officers. Pownall was dedicated to
‘the Master’ (as he sometimes endearingly referred to Churchill) and it
was this dedication that prompted him to write that Churchill would
have to be knocked off ‘his present perch’ for his own good. Although
Pownall was ‘confident’ that Churchill would eventually ‘come down
a long way’ and make the necessary revision about his opinion of
Indian officers in general, he did not anticipate that Churchill would
do so easily. Pownall even concluded that he had seen ‘plenty of previ-
ous instances’ in which he thought Churchill was ‘being unfair’ and he
had felt compelled to ‘wade in’. He concluded that although Church-
ill tended to grumble and mumble he would nonetheless ‘give way’,
although ‘perhaps at the very last moment and secretly, behind ones
back!’72 Churchill may have revised his draft sentences in order to
colour how he was perceived by the general electorate in Britain (and
by the worldwide book-buying public in general), but he did not revise
his opinions. On the matter of the Indian Army, as on any subject
which Churchill found too difficult to either recount or express, he
downplayed its significance.
When the pivotal contribution that the Indian Army had made to the
war resurfaced in the chronology of his tale, Churchill again glossed
over it. No doubt the advent of Indian, as well as Burmese, independ-
ence contributed to this snubbing of the Indian Army’s achievements,
but Burma had exposed a morass of raw nerves for Churchill. Con-
trary to his expectations, the Indian Army had proved itself to be a
formidable fighting unit, an army which quickly adapted to unfamiliar
terrain and an army that learnt from its mistakes and became adept
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 225
at improvisation. Churchill’s dismissal of the Indian Army, and espe-
cially its role in the reconquest of Burma, was manifest throughout
his memoirs. Churchill’s imperialist and racist assumptions alone do
not explain his interpretations of the war. Having initially regarded
the Japanese soldier as non-threatening in 1939 and 1940, Churchill
changed his mind and finally admitted in 1943 that Japanese troops
were dedicated professional soldiers. Churchill could change his mind
about the Japanese soldier, but not the about the sepoy or jawan. The
Indian Army had proved its worth, time and time again. But situating
the Indian Army’s wartime successes within his post-war concerns was
incompatible; it would have revealed how the issue of Indian inde-
pendence and the reconquest of Burma had almost forced America
and Britain apart.73 Churchill wanted the wartime Anglo-American
special relationship to appear strong and long-lasting, especially with
the onset of the Cold War – a war which he realized Britain could not
fight without American help and co-operation. Churchill’s most press-
ing post-war imperative, to shore-up the binding that tied the English-
speaking peoples together, was therefore incompatible with extolling
the virtues of an army which had been at the centre of such a volatile
time.
It had been the Atlantic Charter, signed by Churchill and Roosevelt
on 12 August 1941, which had marked the start of American pressure
on the British Empire to reassess its very nature, as well as Churchill’s
preparedness to sacrifice parts of the empire for victory.74 When cou-
pled with pressure from the Left in Britain, as well as from the nation-
alist leaders themselves, Churchill despatched Stafford Cripps to India
with an offer of post-war independence in return for a renewal of
support and effort in the conflict. The dire losses that Britain and her
empire had incurred in the previous months gave Churchill and his
War Cabinet the impetus to solve (or at least be seen to attempt to
solve) the political impasse in India – the central wartime bastion for
the British and Allied war effort in the East. Even though Churchill
believed the idea that the Indian Congress would ‘rally to the com-
mon cause and their own security’ was nothing but a ‘vain illusion’,
he was willing to acquiesce to wartime American sentiment in very
broad terms.75 Clearly, the ‘special relationship’ was buckling under
stress and strain.
The discernible wartime friction between the English-speaking peo-
ples became palpable over Burma. In an effort to hide the temporary
and volatile nature of Anglo-American relations in the latter part of
the war, Churchill diminished the severity of the Japanese invasion of
Burma and India. In doing so, Churchill was able to sidestep having to
226 Cat Wilson
revisit just how volatile Anglo-American relations had been only a few
months after Pearl Harbor. The cracks between Roosevelt and Church-
ill (between American anti-imperialism and British imperial interests)
had begun to show over the lack of wartime constitutional progress
for a post-war self-governing India. These cracks quickly turned into
fissures over Burma. Writing in November 1952, after he had achieved
his ambition of a return to 10 Downing Street, Churchill was very
much aware that he had to still tread carefully with the Americans:
‘of course we have not got permission to publish letters and telegrams
from Ike and Truman’ and, so he continued, he did ‘not intend to print
anything they would object to’.76 Churchill was obviously conscious of
how the wartime fragility of the union between the English-speaking
peoples had persisted into the post-war world. Downplaying the sever-
ity of the threat that the Japanese invasion posed to India, therefore,
allowed him to gloss over the fragile nature of the wartime ‘special
relationship’ and thereby almost ignore the Indian Army. It was far
preferable for Churchill to rail against the Indian Army and India itself
(a characteristic manoeuvre for one who had held a lifelong and com-
plex vision of the Raj as the heart of Empire) than it was to jeopardize
his most pressing contemporary concern – of portraying the transat-
lantic alliance as indelible.

Churchill’s influence on official history

The barrister and Independent Conservative MP Sir Cuthbert Head-
lam, upon seeing how Churchill and Roosevelt were enjoying the
‘popular ovation’ given to them at the Quebec Conference of Septem-
ber 1944, commented that Churchill would find it hard to make the
transition to a peacetime world. What Churchill would do when the
war was over ‘goodness only knows’. Perhaps, Headlam continued,
Churchill should ‘retire from public life’ and ‘sit down and write his
reminiscences’.77 Churchill refused to retire, but he did write his mem-
oirs. Widely perceived as history, Churchill significantly influenced the
way in which the narrative of the war in the Far East was presented
for a long period of time – as a sideshow, a comparatively unimportant
and little discussed theatre when contrasted against the volumes and
tomes dedicated to the war in Europe, the Battle of the Atlantic and
even the fight for North Africa. Douglas Ford recently pointed out
that Britain’s conduct of the war in the Far East had ‘not attracted
much scholarly attention’, because ‘the Asia-Pacific theatres were of
secondary importance for Britain’.78 Ford researched British intelli-
gence matters in the Far East – aiming to firmly locate the subject of
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 227
British intelligence within the general history of the Second World War
instead of it retaining its extra-curricular quality – and he noted how
the official histories of British intelligence argued that ‘because Brit-
ain’s engagement in the Far East was minor, its intelligence activities
there do not demand scholarly research’.79 What compelled the official
histories of the war (not only of British intelligence but also of the
war in general) to downplay the war in the Far East, and the armies
that fought there, was Churchill’s memoir.80 While it is true that we
now accept Churchill’s memoirs as memoirs and not as history, as
far as the war in the Far East was concerned, his partial version of
events cast a long shadow over the history of India’s war effort and
the Indian Army – a shadow which only really started to dissipate in
the early 1990s.81 Of course the blame for this state of affairs should
not be directed solely at Churchill, but he certainly tried to protect his
narrative.
Churchill’s defence of his own account was effected principally by
placing strict conditions upon the use of his papers by any historian.
He specified that the official historians were allowed to quote from his
private papers, provided the quote was not shorn of context and was
quoted in full (whether placed in the text or in a suitably identified
footnote or appendix).82 This stipulation was decided upon in 1947,
perhaps coincidentally, just as Churchill was settling down into the
rhythm of the syndicate and his own narrative. He made it very clear
that any extracts which were proposed to be published were to be
shown to him beforehand.83 Navigating the permissions and copyright
labyrinth proved to be complicated, but the requirement Churchill
imposed meant that the vetting of quotes (and determining whether
his stipulation had been adequately met) took time and this, in turn,
meant delays in publication. By the time James Butler (who had been
appointed as Chief Military Historian and Editor of the whole series
of official histories in 1946) turned to Norman Brook, the Cabinet
Secretary, for precise clarification upon the matter, Churchill’s stipula-
tions had already proved vexing to some of the official historians for a
while: one complained that he had been ‘trying for sixteen months to
comply’, but as ‘so many different interpretations’ existed it had never
been ‘quite clear what the argument was’.84
It took almost eight years before the complexities and problems
associated with the conditions imposed upon the use of Churchill’s
personal papers reached crisis point for the official historians. By this
point, enough time had passed for Churchill’s narrative to have sunk
into public consciousness. Having dined and discussed the issue with
Churchill at Chartwell, on 27 June 1955, Norman Brook relayed to
228 Cat Wilson
Butler that Churchill’s main ‘fear’ was that ‘his meaning might be dis-
torted by partial quotation’.85 In this, Churchill was not alone for other
wartime would-be memoirists also feared being taken out of context
in the post-war world. The American President, Harry S. Truman, for
example, asked that Churchill not quote directly from cables they had
exchanged, preferring that Churchill paraphrase them instead. Tru-
man’s reasoning was twofold. Firstly, he could not get access to the
National Archives to verify the text as his papers were ‘not in shape’,
and secondly, he wished to use the exact text as Churchill within his
own memoirs,86 reasoning which Churchill was similarly inclined to
give in order to protect his version of events.
Brook tried to get Churchill to agree that the official historians
should be trusted to use their discretion when quoting ‘only a sentence
or phrase’, but he failed. But, Brook succeeded in obtaining the defini-
tive clarification of the conditions of use:

Sir Winston said that he did not mind how much of his personal
writings was reproduced in the Official Histories, so long as the
relevant texts were printed in full. The rule should be that, if any
quotations were made, the full text of the relevant part of the
document should be reproduced either in the body of the History
or in an appendix.87

In order to avoid ‘unsatisfactory replies’ and further delays, Butler and

his team of historians were encouraged to accept Churchill’s terms of
use.88 Understandably, Butler was sure the historians would be dis-
appointed that Churchill was not prepared to trust their ‘discretion
and conscience’.89 The general response, such as that of Major Gen-
eral Stanley Woodburn Kirby, the official historian whose task was to
research and record the war in the Far East and therefore the Indian
Army’s reconquest of Burma, was one of reluctant acceptance.
Kirby was well and truly into the researching and writing of the
Malayan campaign during the summer of 1951, when Churchill was
preparing for the likelihood of an autumn general election. The Ameri-
can edition of the fourth volume of Churchill’s memoirs (The Hinge
of Fate) had already been published in the previous November, and
the British edition was due out in August.90 Thanks to the high vol-
ume of sales and the comprehensive way in which Churchill’s mem-
oirs were being serialized, his portrayal of the fall of Singapore, the
Cripps Mission and the invasion of Burma (events which Kirby was
delving into) may already have seeped into the collective historical
consciousness. After all, his easily read and lucid text ultimately gave
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 229
a more favourable version of events such as the Blitz, or the Battle of
Britain for example, which made the more difficult events, such as
the fall of Singapore, easier to comprehend. Kirby entered into con-
siderable correspondence with Lieutenant General Percival, who had
led the British surrender at Singapore, and both became enmeshed
in the minutiae. Percival was asked by Kirby to clarify, for example,
why General Heath was on his way to Singapore when the decision
to not withdraw was made by the War Council. Was Heath attending
a conference and, if so, at whose behest? Kirby was keen to point out
that the purpose behind such questioning was to ‘get all the facts into
true perspective’. Furthermore, Kirby wrote that it seemed ‘surprising’
that the Corps Commander would be absent from his post at such a
‘critical moment’ and that it would ‘be interesting to know what the
real reasons were’.91 Percival replied, in this instance, the next day. He
suggested that Kirby read the official reports and then directed him
to read the relevant passages from his own publication, The War in
Malaya.92 Sifting through such correspondence took time, and Per-
cival was only one of several dozen correspondents.93 Although such
thorough research enabled Kirby to give a fuller perspective and a
far more accurate narrative than Churchill, there were other obstacles
that he had to overcome: waiting for, and then engaging with, the offi-
cial histories of other countries; voluminous correspondence with the
key participants of the war in the Far East; conforming to Churchill’s
terms for quoting from his papers; having to have his work vetted by
men such as Pownall (who had been a key member of Churchill’s syn-
dicate) and, above all, the fact that his narrative, no matter how full
and comprehensive, had to compete with Churchill’s version which
had already gained a significant hold over the public consciousness.
Anticipating the production of other countries’ official histories also
acted as a brake on Kirby’s efforts. In another communiqué with Per-
cival, for instance, Kirby was well aware that there had been a wish
to avoid ‘strife between ourselves and Australia’, so, instead of circu-
lating the draft volume which dealt with the Malayan campaign, the
consensus had been to wait until the Australian official history had
been published so the versions could be compared. Kirby was well
aware that he (representing the official histories) and Percival did not
‘see quite eye to eye’ on various matters, but he nonetheless antici-
pated that Percival would still make his views known to him.94 Kirby
had to deal with voluminous correspondence, widely varying points
of view and experiences, fading memories, personal biases and outside
pressures. He wrote that as the volume was deemed contemporary
history, he was ‘quite unable to tell half the awful truth’, such as ‘how
230 Cat Wilson
even in the threat of invasion conflicting personalities were allowed
to interfere with the security of the vital strategical points in the Far
East’.95 Adding to the forces affecting the volumes which narrated the
war against Japan was the growing concern over the exact conditions
pertaining to the use of Churchill’s minutes. Kirby sifted through the
first volume and found only seven quotations from Churchill (five of
which had been published in his memoirs). For the sixth and seventh
instances, Kirby proposed to ‘quote the whole telegram’ and ‘para-
phrase the quotation’ respectively.96
The first volume of Kirby’s official history was not published until
1957. The official histories had set out to be ‘readable’, and the depth
and scope of Kirby’s knowledge and research was (and still is) breath-
taking – but it could not compete with the readability or reputation
of Churchill and his Second World War.97 Churchill never claimed
that his was the definitive version of the history of the war, and ironi-
cally, the longer his narrative remained unchallenged (that is to say
the longer the official histories were delayed), the less obstructive he
needed to be because his narrative had become the accepted perspec-
tive. Although Churchill’s six-volume narrative did not exist in a vac-
uum, it was the only memoir to span the entire war and remained
unrivalled.98 As far as the Indian Army’s contribution to the Second
World War was concerned, Churchill’s version of history was secure
until at least the early 1980s.99

Conclusion
In one of his many philosophical moments, Churchill wrote that
‘words are the only things that last forever’.100 Undoubtedly his mem-
oirs remain a source of inestimable value – not as an historical nar-
rative but rather as a lens through which Churchill himself can be
viewed and examined. His skilful wielding of a pen manipulated his-
tory, in this instance, at the expense of the Indian Army, so that he
could mythologize the wartime history of the Anglo-American ‘special
relationship’ and not reveal how volatile it had been – especially over
the issue of Indian independence and the reconquest of Burma. Prasad,
Bhargava and Khera published the official history of the Indian Army
in 1958 (reasonably soon after Churchill’s version), but its accuracy
and style was hardly discernible above Churchill’s more powerful and
verbose effort.101
Things are, however, changing, as the original eight volumes of the
official history of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War
were recently republished. A new generation will be more able to see
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 231
how the Indian Army participated in the 1940 campaigns in Europe;
how some took part in the evacuation at Dunkirk and just how bloody
the battles for Monte Cassino actually were. India is reclaiming its
military history; a history which has to confront and account for the
existence of the Indian National Army, the machinations of the nation-
alist movement, and the still staggering thought that the largest volun-
teer army ever amassed fought on behalf of others for a freedom which
they themselves did not have. This complex historical narrative needs
to be placed within the wider frame of the Second World War because
despite its complexity, the Indian Tiger had struck, it had killed, and it
had triumphed.102 Not just in Burma, but in North Africa, in Italy, in
Eritrea and Ethiopia, Greece and the Middle East.
The wartime history was there for Churchill to include, and expand
upon – he chose not to. Those who knew Churchill well, encouraged
each other to discuss the Indian Army and its achievements with him
in the hope that he might give some form of acknowledgement. In
May 1945, Leo Amery wrote that he hoped Churchill would have a
talk with Claude Auchinleck so that he could ‘learn from him some-
thing of the real efficiency behind the front line of the Indian Army’.103
Amery’s remark illustrates how Churchill had clearly not changed his
outdated, imperialistic and disdainful regard for the Indian Army by
the end of the Second World War. When it came to writing his mem-
oirs, and the pivotal role the Indian Army played in the reconquest
of Burma resurfaced, it became one more issue that Churchill glossed
over. He made it clear in his preface to Closing the Ring – the volume
which dealt with the reconquest of Burma – that he had ‘found it
necessary . . . to practise compression and selection in an increasing
degree’.104 The advent of Indian (as well as Burmese) independence
may have contributed to his snubbing of the Indian Army’s achieve-
ments, but Churchill wrote his memoirs to aid his return to Downing
Street and to secure Britain’s ability to enter the Cold War as one of the
main players. He could not do this without pandering to wartime, as
well as contemporary, American sensibilities. In doing so, he neglected
how India provided the largest volunteer force ever mustered; how
it was thrust into an imperial war which was not of its making; how
the Indian Army developed an unerring ability to learn quickly from
its mistakes, and arguably become the most successful army, in argu-
ably the most difficult terrain. Churchill’s obsession with India, and
his post-war contemporary concerns of appeasing American opinion,
affected his portrayal of the Indian Army’s role in the Second World
War, which, until recently, at least in historiographical terms, remained
in the shadows.
232 Cat Wilson
Notes
1 For quotes reproduced from the speeches, works and writings of Winston S.
Churchill: Reproduced with the permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf
of The Estate of Winston S. Churchill. © The Estate of Winston S. Churchill.
2 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vols. 1–6 (London: Cassell,
1948–52).
3 Raymond A. Callahan, ‘The Leader as Imperialist: Churchill and the
King’s Other Army’, Finest Hour, vol. 158 (2013), p. 25.
4 The term ‘Indian Army’ refers to the British-Indian Army stationed in
India which comprised of British officers, Indian rank and file and Indian
Viceroy Commissioned Officers (VCOs). The term ‘sepoy’ comes from the
Persian term sipahi (soldier), and was used to describe the Indian rank and
file. It was later replaced by (or became interchangeable with) the term
jawan (an Indian private).
5 The exception to this statement is, of course, the Indian National Army
which (according to British military intelligence) numbered of 23,266.
6 General Sir Mosley Mayne, ‘The Indian Fighting Services in the War’, talk
delivered on 21 February 1945 at the Royal United Services Institute, Lon-
don, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, vol. 90, no. 559
(1945), p. 288.
7 Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (London:
Thornton Butterworth, 1930), p. 164.
8 Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (Karachi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1974), p. 3.
9 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, The Grand Alliance
(London: Cassell, 1950), Churchill to Chief of Staff Committee, 17 Febru-
ary 1941, Appendix C, p. 653.
10 The following works have been pivotal in bringing Churchill’s literary
career to the fore: Peter Clarke, Mr Churchill’s Profession: The Statesman
as Author and the Book That Defined the ‘Special Relationship’ (Lon-
don: Bloomsbury, 2012); John Ramsden, Man of the Century: Winston
Churchill and His Legend Since 1945 (London: HarperCollins, 2002); and
David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing
the Second World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004).
11 Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode in
Frontier War (London: Longman, 1898; Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962), p. 34.
12 Ibid., p. 39.
13 Ibid., p. 55.
14 Churchill, My Early Life, p. 170.
15 Winston S. Churchill, Savrola: A Novel, a Tale of Revolution in Laurania
(London; New York: Longmans Green, 1898); serialised in Macmillan’s
Magazine May–December 1899.
16 Winston S. Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill, vols. 1–2 (London: Mac-
millan, 1906).
17 Edward Porritt, ‘Review: “Lord Randolph Churchill” by Winston Spencer
Churchill’, The American Historical Review, vol. 11, no. 3 (1906), p. 675.
18 John Lukacs, Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2002), p. 109.
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 233
19 Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vols. 1–5 (London: Thornton
Butterworth, 1923–1931).
20 As cited by Reynolds, In Command of History, p. 5.
21 Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, vols. I–IV (Lon-
don: Harrap, 1933–1938).
22 Maurice Ashley, Churchill as Historian (London: Secker & Warburg,
1968), p. 138.
23 Morton J. Frisch, ‘The Intention of Churchill’s “Marlborough”’, Polity,
vol. 12, no. 4 (1980), p. 562.
24 Ashley Jackson, Churchill (London: Quercus, 2011), p. 232.
25 The ‘Official History Programme’ was originally conceived so that lessons
could be learnt from mistakes made during the Boer and Russo-Japanese
wars. Following the outbreak of the Great War, however, the Committee
of Imperial Defence (the government department assigned the responsibil-
ity of compiling the histories since 1906) decided that only wars in which
Britain had participated would be produced by the small and recently cre-
ated Historical Section. Some 50 volumes of official Great War history
were eventually produced (although some were still being researched and
published as the Second World War erupted), with the onus on military
and naval history. The objectives of the official histories (split into four
sections: military, civil, diplomatic and unified) were: ‘to record the course
of the war as completely as possible for the benefit of posterity, and of the
professional student’; to ‘record the organizations set up and found neces-
sary (or unnecessary) for the various aspects of a war effort’; and to ‘edu-
cate public opinion in the meaning and conduct of war’. It was thought
that the military histories should appear later than five years (but no later
than seven years) after the end of the war so that a full analysis of pris-
oner of war accounts and enemy documents could either be incorporated
or at least consulted. A 12-year limit for the production of the histories
was introduced as it was thought that not only would the public have lost
interest by then, but also because ‘memories fade and those who took
part cannot give useful comments on the narrative’. The national Archives
(also known as Public Record Office) TNA, CAB 103/150: Annexe 1,
draft, p. 1, c. September 1941. See also TNA, CAB 103/151: ‘War Cabi-
net, Committee for the Control of Official Histories, Suggested outline
plan for the Official Histories of the Present War’, 8 October 1941.
26 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: vol. 1, The Gathering
Storm (London: Cassell, 1948), p. VII.
27 John H. Plumb, ‘The Historian’, in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Churchill: Four
Faces (London: Allen Lane, 1969) p. 148.
28 Ibid., pp. 148–9.
29 Ibid., p. 149.
30 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 5.
31 See Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Devel-
opment of a Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971),
especially pp. 68–76; Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account of
the Indian Army, Its Officers and Men (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972),
pp. 412–43; Hugh Tinker, ‘India in the First World War and After’, Jour-
nal of Contemporary History, vol. 3, no. 4 (October 1968), pp. 89–107;
234 Cat Wilson
and Charles C. Trench, The Indian Army and the King’s Enemies, 1900–
1947 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), pp. 75–90.
32 See Gordon Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the
Western Front, 1914–1915 (Stroud: Spellmount, 2006); David Kenyon,
‘The Indian Cavalry Divisions in Somme: 1916’, in Kaushik Roy (ed.),
The Indian Army in the Two World Wars (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 33–62;
and David E. Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters,
1914–18 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999).
33 See Clarke, Mr Churchill’s Profession (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 144.
34 Cassell’s sold 221,000 copies of the first edition of Churchill’s The Gather-
ing Storm, whereas in the United States, 530,000 copies had been sold by
July 1951. Reynolds, In Command of History, pp. 136, 139.
35 Moon (ed.), Wavell, Wavell quoting Mountbatten, p. 3.
36 Churchill spent no more than 12 months in India as he interspersed his
post with various sorties as a war correspondent (in Cuba, Egypt and the
Sudan) and with several trips back to London. He resigned his commis-
sion in May 1899. Sarvepalli Gopal puts the total time Churchill spent
in India at 10 months: Gopal, ‘Churchill and India’, in Robert Blake and
Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life
in Peace and War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 457.
37 Churchill, My Early Life, p. 164.
38 The languages spoken within Churchill’s cantonment would have been
either Kannada or Tamil. A debt of gratitude is owed to Dr Chandar
Sundaram for his corrections and guidance offered on the languages used
within the Indian Army (especially those which would have been used in
and around the cantonment in Bangalore).
39 Churchill, My Early Life, p. 164.
40 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate
(London: Cassell, 1951), p. 194. See also his justification to Roosevelt, 4
March 1942, pp. 185–6.
41 Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, p. 195.
42 See Sanjoy Bhattacharya, ‘British Military Information Management
Techniques and the South Asian Soldier: Eastern India During the Second
World War’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 34, no. 2 (2000), pp. 483–510;
and Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context: A Case Study
of the Indian Army During World War II’, Journal of Military History,
vol. 73, no. 2 (2009), pp. 497–529.
43 Nicholas Mansergh and E. W. R. Lumby (eds.), The Transfer of Power
1942–7, vol. 4, The Bengal Famine and the New Viceroyalty, 15
June 1943–31 August 1944 (London: HMSO, 1973), Wavell to Amery, 2
November 1943, doc. 200.
44 Transfer of Power, vol. 4, Amery’s memo, 22 September 1943, doc. 133.
45 Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (Lon-
don: Little Brown & Company, 1997), p. 578.
46 Churchill has wrongly been demonized as the cause of the famine. The
causes were the Japanese invasion and occupation of Burma, the subse-
quent cessation of Burmese imports of rice to India and the inability of
local government officials to act upon the situation quickly enough, as
well as localized and centralized stockpiling, and ever-increasing prices.
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 235
Churchill (and of course the War Cabinet) could have done far more to
alleviate the horrific famine conditions.
47 Mason, A Matter of Honour, p. 513. The obvious exception to this state-
ment is the Indian National Army. See Gajendra Singh, ‘‘‘Breaking the
Chains with Which We Were Bound”’: The Interrogation Chamber, the
Indian National Army and the Negation of Military Identities’, in Roy
(ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars, pp. 493–518.
48 Mason, A Matter of Honour, p. 509.
49 Roy, ‘Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context: A Case Study of the Indian
Army During World War II’, pp. 528–9.
50 Another example of Churchill being disparaging towards so-called native
troops reads: ‘The African Colonial divisions ought not surely to be called
divisions at all. No one contemplates them standing in the line against a
European army’. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, Churchill to Chief of
Staff Committee, 17 February 1941, Appendix C, p. 653. This also shows
his lack of knowledge as the West African Brigade contained some British
troops.
51 Churchill, Grand Alliance, Churchill to Chief of Staff Committee, 17 Feb-
ruary 1941, in Appendix C, p. 653.
52 Raymond Callahan, ‘Churchill and the Indian Army’, paper presented
at ‘The Indian Army, 1939–1947’, Second Joint Imperial War Museum/
King’s College London Military History Conference, 9 May 2009.
53 ISMAY 2/3/196A: Pownall to Ismay, 23 January 1950, LHCMA, London.
54 A debt of gratitude is owed to Alan Jeffreys (Imperial War Museum) for
his corrections and guidance on the varying differences (and at times sub-
tle nuances) between the Commanding Officers.
55 Brian Bond (ed.), Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lt.-General Sir Henry
Pownall, vol. 2 (London: Leo Cooper, 1974), 20 December 1941, p. 66.
56 Mason, A Matter of Honour, p. 522.
57 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5, Closing the Ring
(London: Cassell, 1952), pp. 500–2. For details on Kohima and Imphal
see, among others: Louis Allen, Burma: The Longest War 1941–45
(London: Dent & Sons Ltd, 1984); Leslie Edwards, Kohima, the Fur-
thest Battle: The Story of the Japanese Invasion of India in 1944 and the
‘British-Indian Thermopylae’ (Stroud: History Press, 2009); Col. Michael
Hickey, The Unforgettable Army: Slim’s XIVth Army in Burma (Tun-
bridge Wells: Spellmount, 1992); Robert Lyman, Japan’s Last Bid for Vic-
tory: The Invasion of India 1944 (Barnsley: Praetorian Press, 2011); and
Daniel Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma
Campaign (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).
58 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 501.
59 Ibid., p. 501.
60 Ibid., p. 503. The reference that Churchill made to this victory being ‘the
first major British victory’ has two connotations. The first being that the
Indian Army was in fact part of the army of the British Empire and there-
fore the defeat of the Japanese was effected by British agency. The second
connotation was that being a British victory rather than an American-led
victory which, to Churchill, proved far more important a point to score in
the post-war world as it implied that he had been correct to defy American
236 Cat Wilson
wartime demands and the implication was that Churchill was the man
who would be able to do so again in the Cold War world.
61 Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian
Empire and the War with Japan (London: Penguin, 2005), p. XXX.
62 ‘Review of the Year, 1942’, The Times, 2 January 1943.
63 Reynolds, In Command of History, pp. 402–3.
64 The phrase ‘defeat into victory’ is used constantly when referring to the
Burma campaigns of 1941 to 1945, and finds its origins in Field Marshal
Viscount Slim, Defeat into Victory (London: Cassell, 1956).
65 CCAC, CHUR 4/341/6: Letter in which Churchill relayed (to Pownall) Slim’s
complaint and Churchill’s assurance and placatory response, 8 November
1952.
66 Churchill, The Grand Alliance, Churchill to Maharaja Jam Sahib of
Nawanagar, 24 March 1941, Appendix C, p. 667.
67 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Churchill to Second Sea Lord, 14 Octo-
ber 1939, Appendix II, p. 607.
68 CCAC, CHAR 4/401/18: Message from Churchill for the South East Asia
Command Newspaper, 10 January 1944.
69 CCAC, CHUR 4/401/20: Churchill to De Gaulle, 4 February 1944;
CCAC, CHUR 4/401/19: Churchill to National Farmers’ Union, 25 Janu-
ary 1944; and CCAC, CHUR 4/401/22: Churchill to the National Savings
Committee, 20 March 1944.
70 Callahan, ‘Churchill and the Indian Army’, 9 May 2009.
71 CCAC, CHUR 4/253A/128: Kelly to Churchill annotated note, 30 May
1950.
72 ISMAY 2/3/271/2: Pownall to Mountbatten, 16 February 1951, LHCMA.
73 Churchill wrote that, in December 1941, he had ‘reacted so strongly and at
such length’ when Roosevelt had first ‘discussed the Indian problem’ that
‘he never raised it verbally again’. Churchill, Hinge of Fate, p. 185. In a
draft of the chapter ‘India: The Cripps Mission’, Churchill had originally
written a rather less dramatic sentence: ‘The President had first discussed
the Indian problem with me in general terms during my visit to Washing-
ton in December 1941’. The vehemence behind the final published version
certainly gave the impression that Churchill was a man who would stand
his ground even in the face of overwhelming opposition – a vital attribute
to any international statesman who was operating within the Cold War era.
74 Upon his return to Britain, Churchill quickly emphasized that the Atlantic
Charter did ‘not qualify in any way the various statements of policy which
have been made from time to time about the development of constitu-
tional government in India, Burma or other parts of the British Empire’.
HC Deb, vol. 374, col. 68, Churchill, 9 September 1941.
75 Churchill, The Grand Alliance, p. 614.
76 CCAC, CHUR 4/25A/57: Churchill to Ismay, 15 November 1952.
77 Stuart Ball (ed.), Parliament and Politics in the Ages of Churchill and
Attlee: The Headlam Diaries, 1935–1951, Camden 5th series, vol. 14
(London: Royal Historical Society, 1999), p. 419.
78 Douglas Ford, Britain’s Secret War Against Japan: 1937–1945 (London:
Routledge, 2006), p. 2.
79 Ford, Britain’s Secret War Against Japan, 1937–1945, p. 2. See Francis
H. Hinsley with E. E. Thomas, C. F. G. Ransom and R. C. Knight, British
 Churchill, the Indian Army and The Second World War 237
Intelligence in the Second World War, vols. 1–2, Its Influence on Strategy
and Operations (London: HMSO, 1979–1981); Hinsley with Thomas,
Ransom and C. A. G. Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World
War, vol. 3, Parts 1 & 2, Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (Lon-
don: HMSO, 1984–1988); Hinsley and Simkins, British Intelligence in
the Second World War, vol. 4, Security and Counter-Intelligence (London:
HMSO, 1990); and Michael Howard, British Intelligence in the Second
World War, vol. 5, Strategic Deception (London: HMSO, 1990).
80 The one obvious exception to this rule was produced by the Military
Histories Section: Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against
Japan, vols. 1–5 (London: HMSO, 1957–69).
81 Applying the search term ‘Indian Army’ into the Bibliography of Brit-
ish and Irish History database (date range of 1947–2000) produces 142
results: 57 articles within journals; nine chapters within edited books; 76
books. From 1947 until 1988, there was an average of two publications
a year. Between 1989 and 2000, however, the average output increased to
five a year. Perhaps it is coincidental, but just as Churchill’s political legacy
was being unsentimentally tested by John Charmley, Churchill: The End
of Glory, a Political Biography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), the
areas which his historical narrative neglected began to be examined more
closely, for example, the history of the Indian Army (albeit not solely its
role within the two world wars).
82 The term ‘official history’ is used to describe the government-sanctioned
official histories of the war which were researched and written by a series
of well-respected serving officers and historians under the editorial leader-
ship of James R. M. Butler (knighted in 1958 for his contribution to the
series).
83 Reynolds, In Command of History, p. 513; citing TNA, CAB 103/422:
Churchill to Bridges, 17 July 1947.
84 TNA, CAB 140/68: Major-General Ian S. O Playfair to James R. M. But-
ler, 19 August 1955.
85 TNA, CAB 140/68: Brook to Acheson, 8 August 1955; TNA, CAB
140/68: James R. M. Butler to the official historians (Sir Charles Webster;
Dr. Frankland, Captain Roskill, Mr Collier, Major Ellis, General Playfair,
General Kirby, Mr Gwyer, Mr Passant, Mr Ehrman, and Professor Gibbs),
18 August 1955.
86 CCAC, CHUR 4/63A/34: Truman to Churchill, 20 May 1953.
87 TNA, CAB 140/68: Brook to Acheson, 8 August 1955.
88 TNA, CAB 140/68: Brook to Acheson, 8 August 1955.
89 TNA, CAB 140/68: Butler to the official historians, 18 August 1955.
90 Reynolds, In Command of History, p. 531.
91 TNA, CAB 101/150: Kirby to Percival, 18 June 1951.
92 TNA, CAB 101/150: Percival to Kirby, 19 June 1951.
93 For example see: TNA, CAB 101/157: Correspondence between Kirby
and Lt-Col. J. Dow Sainter regarding the action of the 6/1st Punjab; TNA,
CAB 101/159: Correspondence between Kirby and Air Chief Marshal Sir
Robert Brooke-Popham; TNA, CAB 101/185: Correspondence between
Kirby and Slim.
94 TNA, CAB 101/150: Kirby to Percival, 14 June 1954.
95 TNA, CAB 101/150: Kirby to Butler, 14 January 1955.
238 Cat Wilson
96 TNA, CAB 140/68: Kirby to Butler, 23 August 1955.
97 TNA, CAB 103/150: Annexe 1, draft, p. 1, c. September 1941.
98 The only other possible rival to Churchill’s historical narrative (written
from a personal and top-down perspective) would have been by Anthony
Eden, but his memoirs were neither fully researched nor written until
the late 1950s and early 1960s. Reynolds remarked that by the time his
memoirs were published, Eden would have realized that he had already
lost ‘the battle for history’ to Churchill and his syndicate. Reynolds, In
Command of History, p. 512.
99 While some works (now considered to be pivotal texts) discussed the con-
tribution the Indian Army had made to the Second World War, such as
Slim’s Defeat into Victory (1956), Cohen’s magisterial The Indian Army:
Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Berkeley: University
of California, 1971) and later Callahan’s Burma: 1942–1945 (London:
Davis-Poynter, 1978), it was not until the mid-1980s that the Indian
Army was being included in the general historical narrative. Works such
as Mason’s A Matter of Honour (1986) and Farwell’s Armies of the Raj:
From the Great Indian Mutiny to Independence, 1885–1947 (London:
Viking, 1989) sparked the Western interest in the Indian Army and led
to Trench’s, The Indian Army and the King’s Enemies (1998), and David
Killingray and David Omissi’s, Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces
of the Colonial Powers, c. 1700–1964 (Manchester: Manchester Univer-
sity Press, 1999).
100 CCAC, CHAR 8/614/141: ‘The Union of the English-Speaking Peoples’,
Typescript Copy, written for the News of the World, published on 15
May 1938.
101 S. N. Prasad, K. D. Bhargava and P.N. Khera, The Reconquest of Burma,
vol. 1 (Orient Longmans: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section
(India & Pakistan), 1958).
102 Government of India, The Tiger Strikes: The Story of Indian Troops in
North Africa and East Africa (London: HMSO, 1942); ibid., The Tiger
Kills: The Story of British and Indian Troops with the 8th Army in North
Africa (London: HMSO, 1944); ibid., The Tiger Triumphs: The Story of
Three Great Divisions in Italy (London: HMSO, 1946).
103 CCAC, CHAR 20/195/80: Amery to Ismay, 8 May 1945.
104 Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. ix–x.
10 War and Indian
military institutions
The emergence of the
Indian Military Academy
Vipul Dutta

I
The Indian Military Academy (IMA) was formally inaugurated in
1932. Together with its precursors in the form of preparatory schools
and colleges, it provided the first formalized and institutional train-
ing for Indians who wanted to be ‘officers’ in the Indian Army. The
Prince of Wales Royal Military College, one of these preparatory cadet
schools, was established in 1922 in Dehradun as a feeder institution
to Sandhurst, to which only 10 or fewer Indians were admitted each
year and who received the King’s Commission which entitled them, in
the words of an historian, ‘salutes from British as well as Indian sol-
diers’1 as opposed to the Viceroy’s Commissions which were a notch
below the former. The issue of commissions, coupled with increasing
demands for replacing British officers with Indians, provides the broad
framework in which institutional spaces for training Indians came to
be defined.2 The institutional architecture for training stretches back
to the days when the East India Company (EIC), while gaining a firm
foothold in India in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century,
strove to officer its units on a more regular scale. The genealogy, as
it were, of this stream of institutional innovation, which dotted the
Indian landscape and evolving into more modern structures in the fol-
lowing century, started with the establishment of a cadet school on the
lines of Woolwich, 15 miles from Calcutta (now Kolkata) at Barasat in
1802. Although shut down seven years later, it typified the later trajec-
tories of academies, schools and centres that came to be established in
its wake and suffered from similar, uneven phases of activity.3
Following the intensification of the nationalist movement in India
and the conclusion of the First Round Table Conference in 1931, the
proposed establishment of an Indian Training College on the lines of
Sandhurst was one of the resolutions. The Indian Military College
240 Vipul Dutta
Committee, as it came to be known, was then set up under the chair-
manship of Field Marshal Philip Chetwode. In the 1930s when the
IMA was being set up, it was largely seen as a measure intended to
placate nationalist sentiment in India. Only nine years later, however,
its importance was felt acutely when Indian men and materiel were
exported from India to Europe for deployment in the Second World
War. The IMA’s courses were shortened to increase recruitment and
an unprecedented expansion of the institution took place. The estab-
lishment of the IMA in 1932, two decades after the First World War,
marked an important step towards Indianization of the army. It stood
as a symbol of progression of colonial policy, highlighting its initial
reluctance in awarding commissions to Indians to finally agreeing to
set up the infrastructure that granted them.
This chapter attempts to interrogate the processes of nationaliza-
tion and Indianization of the army through studying the emergence of
the IMA in 1932. Through analyses of multiple snapshots of its early
years of functioning, it is intended to bring into focus the finer nuances
of the efforts at first Indianizing, and then later nationalizing this
academy, much of it unexplored in the historiography that exists on
the subject today. From initial attempts at recruitment through com-
petitive examinations to later controversies relating to the position of
Anglo-Indian candidates, the academy found itself dealing with vital
issues of class, race, prestige and identity, a microcosm of the larger
domain it inhabited at this time. Known as the ‘Indian Sandhurst’, a
rather suggestive moniker for an edifice seen mainly as an end point to
the protracted legislative campaign which preceded its establishment,
the IMA on a closer look helps to frame more cogently, the terms of
the debates on Indianization and is a touchstone for measuring the
relative strength of opinions and forms of support which shaped its
initial growth and character.
Much of the scholarship on the academy can be classified as a subset
of the sizeable body of work on the Indian Army that has been pro-
duced in the past decades. Apart from a ‘demi-official’ history4 and
another by M. P. Singh,5 a significant textual source for the IMA is
gleaned from memoirs and archival records comprising official and
private papers, and newspapers. Although the subject of the nation-
alization and Indianization of the Indian Army is by no means devoid
of historical scrutiny, it is the relatively unimaginative and staid
approaches that have attempted to chart the field. One symptom of
this lack of vitality has been the absence of a critical study of the above
two processes in a sharper context. Chandar Sundaram6 provides the
 War and Indian military institutions 241
breakthrough in devising a newer approach by focusing on institutions
which inhabited the nebulous space between policy and practice. His
work on the Indianization of the Imperial Cadet Corps (ICC) unpacks
larger concepts, hitherto studied in their broad outlines to reveal a
more nuanced picture of the ways in which Indianization operated in
all its complexities. This chapter, through bridging a gap in the exist-
ing literature on the subject, intends to portray the history of the IMA
as a distinct but connected story to the mainstream debates on nation-
alization and Indianization that took place at that time. It is precisely
because the emergence of Indian academies is an inescapable reality
that it becomes imperative to look how closely it was shaped and in
turn fed into the governmental policy that operated in the period. The
results merit attention.
The acceptance of the need to have an ‘Indian’ Sandhurst was a
triumph for the nationalists, but it also laid the path clear for thinking
the future contours of an army that was to take shape in the com-
ing years for the political arrangement in India veered towards self-
government. The academy occupied a pivotal position in the by-lanes
of history and war itself. The years between the First and the Second
World Wars re-calibrated the military links which the colonies shared
with Britain. The transition from trench warfare to combined opera-
tions and the increasing professionalization of the armed forces dur-
ing this time called for an intensively trained force. Those recruited
in South Asia ranged from agriculturalists to medical professionals.
This variegated posse of men was representative of the same block of
people for whom the nationalists were striving to secure better terms
of service. Commissions apart, a major portion of deliberations on
the fate of the Indian military personnel from 1920s onwards was
concerned with issues relating to demobilization, Indianization, train-
ing and securing their careers by providing means of livelihood for
their children in the same service. The emergence of the academy was
seen as the solution to the above issues and was partly the outcome
of the wave of professionalization that had swept the military archi-
tecture of the Raj as a result of previous conflicts in which Britain
found itself. This wave had swept the shores of India often enough,
from the first signs of the emergence of a band of military men under
the EIC, to Lord ­Kitchener’s reforms in early twentieth century, it had
now brought ashore the idea that a space on the lines of Sandhurst
could and should be conceived which would enable the formation of
a force that could be on par with the forces of Britain and the Domin-
ions, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Of course, like all littoral
242 Vipul Dutta
zones, the space of the academy and its initial years of functioning had
a complex ecology of its own.
The setting up of the academy thus became part of the larger canvas
wherein wide and determined brushstrokes of economic and political
policies were attempted to be applied. Ranging from discussions on
the post-war economy to politico-constitutional changes as heralded
by the Government of India Act of 1935, the decades from the 1920s
to 1940s were a watershed for India and the attendant military arm-
ing, recruitment and mobilization caused the state to ‘penetrate more
deeply than ever before into Indian society’.7 The years between the
two world wars, apart from the general military mobilization they
brought in their wake, are momentous because they help illuminate
the pathways along which colonial policies towards India moved.
The interwar years saw the Raj in an accommodative posture in rela-
tion to India. While scaling back its defence commitments after the
First World War (and not anticipating the second), India was now
to be made more responsible towards her own defence. This attitu-
dinal shift brought to the fore many issues to the table. A credible
defence architecture would comprise a well-trained, Indianized force
that could man the frontiers in the face of reduction of British troops.
An Indian force needed to be led by commissioned officers, and com-
missioned officers’ numbers had to be increased significantly to sustain
this machine in the subcontinent. While commissions earned through
Sandhurst were too small in number to enable enough Indian officers
in the organization, the emergence of the IMA in 1932 sought to com-
plete the equation on many levels. As an ‘Indian’ Sandhurst, it would
award commissions to Indians in sufficient numbers so as to keep the
nationalization and Indianization plans on a firm footing. An acad-
emy in India would also be seen as a visual proof of Britain’s commit-
ment to India’s realization of self-government that could placate the
nationalist sentiment in India and critics of imperialism back home. Of
course, this equation became complex with the outbreak of the Sec-
ond World War, when an infusion of men from Britain, coupled with
increased recruitments from India under a wide-ranging panoply of
services and terms of enlistment, complicated the picture and made the
task of subsequent demobilization painful. Not to mention the consti-
tutional wrangling of the 1940s which, leading to partition, replaced,
albeit temporarily, the primary goals of nationalization and Indiani-
zation with those of dissection and division of military assets. While
the academy functioned continuously during the war years, churning
out cadets in tune with the fluctuating demands, it was the years lead-
ing up to and during the conflict that the IMA was able to decisively
 War and Indian military institutions 243
negotiate for space and ‘legitimacy’ in India.8 The multiplicity of
courses of varying lengths turned the IMA virtually into a ‘factory’
of sorts. Although it created flashpoints for future conflicts relating
to commissions and demobilization of several cadets trained in these
courses and who felt short-changed by the refusal of the authorities
to keep their alleged promises of ensuring continued service after the
war, the site of the academy as a place for joint training of British and
Indian cadets drawn from various backgrounds and levels of educa-
tion lent it a certain degree of gravitas it was struggling to acquire in
its initial years. The efforts to impart the academy with a national tone
remained a cornerstone of the policies of this period.
As an establishment conceived for Indians desirous of becoming
officers in an ‘Indian’ Army, the initial years of IMA’s functioning didn’t
quite acquire the ‘national’ status it was supposed to be imbibed with.
The continued obsession in some quarters with Sandhurst and Wool-
wich and the disdain attached to Indian commissions suggested a sour
fruition for the IMA in its early years of functioning. Preceded by a
hectic phase of lobbying by colonial, nationalist and Indian princely
states, the emergence of the IMA was seen to be symptomatic of the
larger narrative of the period where in the wake of the gradual transfer
of power to India, it was only natural for her to develop her own insti-
tutions through which self-rule would be effected. However, with the
academy firmly in place, its initial years were anything but smooth. The
inauguration itself, seen in several sections of the historiography of the
Indian Army of this period, sees it as the telos of the struggle for Indi-
anization and nationalization – a milestone. However, in what complex
ways did nationalization develop within the confines of the academy
has evaded scrutiny. The dynamics of nationalization and Indianization
of the army take on a more complex meaning when seen through the
prism of its training institutions. The rigmarole of running a regular
officers training academy, its examination procedures, monitoring out-
comes, assessing cadets and the administration in the initial years of the
IMA point to a narrative which is less inevitable and more variegated
than has been recognized. It questions the neatness with which Indi-
anization and nationalization has often been discussed about. It brings
into life the academy itself which has often been seen on the margins of
this great debate which saw the IMA only as an object of a campaign,
a prize, and not as a site which embodied the essence of that struggle. If
more Indians were to be seen in the army, it was to happen organically
through the academy, and while a considerable amount of attention
has been given to its birth (and its subsequent memorialization), little
of it has ventured beyond and into its functioning.
244 Vipul Dutta
By the late 1930s, concerns regarding the standards obtained by
recruits at the IMA were acute. In a report tabled in 1936, it was
noted that since IMA’s inauguration, ‘8 out of 114 competitive cadets
(those who entered upon passing an examination) had been removed
as unsatisfactory, whereas 19 out of 121 Indian Army cadets (nomi-
nated from within the ranks) were below the mark’.9 While the result
itself wasn’t too disappointing, it was the overall shortfall in the num-
ber of capable cadets filling the seats since the academy’s inception
which created the stir. Added to this was the fierce pitch of nationalist
rhetoric which cried for seat expansion at a time when, according to
government’s reports, the existing full complement at the IMA was
being difficult to train due to various quality issues. Concerns relating
to the ‘type’ of cadets, their backgrounds and scholastic performance
increasingly complicated the picture, and the authorities in charge of
the IMA found themselves at odds with discussions in the Legislative
Assembly that saw the government as dithering over the issue.
To address the problem about the results of the intake, the gov-
ernment offered a two-point solution. It was decided to increase the
staff of the three King Georges’ Royal Indian Military Schools by the
addition of Warrant Officers of the Army Educational Corps and by
increasing the capacity of the Kitchener College (sister institution of
the Prince of Wales Royal Military College and located at Nowgong
in erstwhile Central Provinces) to ‘concentrate at it all candidates
for Indian Army Cadetships for a special course of two years’ train-
ing . . . the selection of Indian Army cadets for Dehra Dun would
be made annually from those passing out from Nowgong’.10 Feeder
Colleges to the IMA were now the focus of the government’s atten-
tion (itself a transition from the previous indifference to these colleges
which resulted in their closure after the First World War) and were
to be treated on par with regular degree colleges by means of focus-
ing on imparting a sound general education fortified with knowledge
that was to see them through the entrance examinations in the acad-
emy. Following this government directive, Indian Military Schools in
Ajmer, Jhelum and Jalandhar were to be revived and avenues opened
for their cadets to acquire the kind of education which would enable
them to gain entry to not only the IMA but other regular universi-
ties.11 The emphasis on a balanced, all-round education required an
efficient instructional staff which until the 1920s was not forthcom-
ing and the high costs of education at these colleges ensured only the
affluent class sent their wards to study which lent an elitist air to these
colleges. Also by the late 1930s it had become quite clear that ‘as far
as entry to the Academy is concerned . . . sons of ex-Indian officers
 War and Indian military institutions 245
and youths of the martial classes have succeeded at clearing the exam
only if they have gone through the Prince of Wales College’.12 With
the onset of the system of competitive examinations, the term ‘martial
races’ appeared as a relic of faulty colonial policy. Based on privilege,
patronage and an exclusivist system of recruitment, it now came to
be seen as an obstruction to the larger plan of developing institutions
that were to be run on a pan-India scale. Also, the experiences of the
two world wars and the astonishing surge of recruitment that they
brought along put paid to perceptions relating to fighting abilities on
the basis of class or caste (or both). The expansion of the feeder col-
leges, their reconfiguration along the lines of regular degree colleges
and their outreach were based on the rising belief in the importance of
sound training for an effective army. It also reflected what C. J. Dewey
called, when writing about the institutional changes in the Indian Civil
Service (ICS), the ‘element of institutional obsolescence and replace-
ment’ which became ‘familiar at least in outline: the movement from
patronage to competitive examination, from Haileybury to the cram-
mers and Oxbridge’.13 The establishment of the IMA had awakened
the possibility of such an ‘institutional replacement’ of the obsolete
architecture on which it stood.
Changes in the feeder colleges apart, the staff at these colleges also
came under attack when it was reported that ‘a number of junior Brit-
ish officers who had not passed the Staff College examination were
holding staff appointments in these colleges.’ Pressure to replace ‘cost-
lier British instructors with Indians’ were accompanied with demands
to have more Indians admitted to the Staff College at Quetta and given
staff appointments. The demand for Indian staff officers and other
functionaries within these colleges became another of the multiple ral-
lying cries of the nationalists in the Legislative Assembly. Thus, the
IMA comes across as a centre point for not just the institutionaliza-
tion of training within its confines but also for the development of
other institutions which were a part of this matrix of training spaces
and were interconnected to each other through vital links of financial,
social, military and human resources.

II
Military institutions in India were as much a product of the experiences
of the world wars and nationalist campaigns for greater ‘Indianiza-
tion’ as they were agents of military professionalism and moderniza-
tion. The institutionalization of military training in the subcontinent
thus reflects much more than just the professionalization of military
246 Vipul Dutta
pedagogy. This institutional growth curve becomes even more appar-
ent in the post-independence years, where ‘newer’ protocols of recruit-
ment supplemented by governmental backing resulted in another wave
of proposals which sought to widen the ambit of these academies,
imbibing them with a reformative spirit not quite dissimilar to the
one which sought to refashion the feeder colleges a few years ago.
However, the changed political landscape after 1947 did not automati-
cally result in a consensus on every issue. While post-independence
governance in India gave credence to revised systems of recruitment
that encouraged enlistment from areas beyond the urban centres, it
shied away from recruiting men from former militant organizations
like the Indian National Army (INA) and gave cold shoulder to the
Indian Emergency Commissioned Officers (ECOs) who had willingly
offered themselves for service to an eager IMA which needed men to
keep itself running just a decade ago.
Freshly minted Indian academies in the late 1940s and 1950s, like
the National Defence Academy (NDA, inaugurated in 1949) includ-
ing prior ones like the IMA, appeared to be desirous of starting anew
after independence. This meant an overhaul of recruitment practices
resulting in the brushing aside of candidates or soldiers who were pre-
viously enlisted in other armed outfits, chief among them being the
INA. Indeed, the associational linkages with revolutionary outfits and
the disdain attached to it went back to the days of the Second World
War, and the alleged ‘treachery’ on the part of the INA against Allied
war effort, however, fears and suspicions about such individuals join-
ing the army percolated down to the independence years as well. Anx-
ious pleas from some families allowed some candidates to be taken
onboard, while others were summarily ignored. By 1934, with the
academy in place, candidatures such as that of a certain Mr Sachin-
dranath Sen were considered for entry only after clearing him of all
charges of ‘sedition’ and ‘association with a revolutionary Bengali out-
fit’ through prolonged enquiries into his past.14 While the controversy
threatened to scotch Sen’s (who was otherwise working as an engineer
in Bath) chances of becoming an officer, Whitehall was also quick to
point out to the Indian government that ‘while a taint of sedition was
undesirable . . . on the other hand recruits are not too easy to get,
and it is important not to lose such a promising candidate if it can be
avoided’.15
Perceptions regarding class, backgrounds and race ran deep in offi-
cial thinking and surprisingly infiltrated even the post-independence
years with regard to military thinking. While the onset of war in 1939
and the subsequent mobilization helped upset the existing balance and
 War and Indian military institutions 247
highlighted the contingent nature of categories over which colonial
understanding of India stood, it was in this larger flux of identities and
material changes that the IMA took shape. The academy appeared on
the horizon, when concerns regarding ‘Indian’ and ‘foreign’ reached a
crescendo in Indian political discourse. The establishment of the IMA
was seen as the most visible and tangible result of colonial policy, as
a site for Indian cadets to train and earn commissions in a regular
army, which after years of foggy policy directives had given rise to an
irregular network of training structures which limited the number of
opportunities that could come in the way of Indians. The need to ‘fix’
the IMA’s status as a ‘national’ institution during a time when ideolog-
ical boundaries were blurred even further than they were before was
a veritable challenge for the Raj. Efforts to organize consensus and
bolster the academy’s precarious position in its early years brought
forth several fissures in the Legislative Assembly that lay underneath
the broad cushion of support that was being offered to the IMA.
Delegates from the princely states, vociferous in their support for
an ‘Indian Sandhurst’ (and credible indeed, if financial contribution
and endowments were any criteria for assessing emerging institutions),
faltered in their other significant commitments to the IMA. The steady
reduction in the numbers coming in from the states, coupled with the
preference for commissions earned at British institutions, was, in no
small measure, responsible in post-marking IMA’s identity as a lesser
institution in many eyes and was seen as a space meant solely for for-
mer ranks to climb higher up.
The indifference of the state forces and the quality of many state
cadets who did attend the IMA portended serious security issues for
the states as well as the British. A deficiency in skilled officers meant
that the State Forces administered by the princes under British tute-
lage and intended to provide a counterbalance to the ‘Indian Army’
would languish. Since the cadets from the State Forces earned commis-
sions into their local formations, it was essential for the government
to see them coming in greater numbers. However, by the mid-1930s,
the whole scheme of ‘affording greater support’ than was given before
the First World War to the Indian State Forces, initiated in 1921 as
a practical sign of ‘policy of trust . . . (had) broken down owing to
the inability or unwillingness of the Darbars to maintain efficiency
in the units’.16 The chief reason for sending underperforming states’
cadets to the IMA, according to the Political Department, was that
the princes and chiefs themselves had ‘failed conspicuously to set an
example by sending their own sons to Dehra Dun in favour of an
English education and training’.17 Asserting that abject class bias and
248 Vipul Dutta
racial prejudices forbade many princes to ‘associate with the type of
British India cadets admitted to Dehra Dun, particularly from the
Indian Army ranks’, the document’s stark conclusion noted that in
fact, ‘social distinctions seem to be taken much more seriously by Indi-
ans than in modern England and particularly so by the Indian states’.18
As a solution, it was proposed to refuse recommending the sons of
minor princes for Woolwich or Sandhurst ‘unless their dynastic salute
is of the highest and their personal qualifications exceptional’ and to
persuade their sons to go to Dehradun instead of to England. Efforts
to convince the princes to revert to the IMA continued long after the
1932 Regulations forbade Indians from attending the Royal Mili-
tary Academy at Sandhurst. Measures were also put in place to make
the education of states’ cadets at Dehradun, one of the conditions of
obtaining increased grants of free equipment to State Forces, but its
implementation is worth questioning.
At another level, the poor showing of the Indian State Forces’ cadets
at the IMA posed the risk of eroding the viability of the academy in
the eyes of both the British and the Indians. In regular reports on the
‘General quality of the IMA Cadets’ published at the end of each term,
the states’ cadets performance appeared well behind others. The fig-
ures submitted with the report showed their numbers in 1934 to be
half their stipulated complement, with 26 out of 50 places taken up
aside from the princely states; initial returns from provinces showed no
cadets from Bengal, Madras and small numbers from Bombay, which
was an ‘interesting comment upon the contention of the Indian politi-
cian that all educated India is longing to obtain commissions in the
army’.19 Contemporaneous legislative proceedings highlight the persis-
tence with which the Indian states demanded representation at the IMA;
however, within years of its establishment, it was clear that the princes
regarded the IMA with indifference. This state of affairs unsettled the
colonial authorities as it feared the spread of this ‘indifference to Indian
politicians in British India and thus affect their views as regards the
method and progress of Indianization of the regular Indian Army’.20
The accent was now on promoting ‘entry to the IMA as a privilege, and
not a condescension as some rulers seem to think’ and so a substantial
reduction of the number of vacancies allotted to the states’ cadets along
with ‘stiffening up the entrance qualification still further’ – by imposing
additional English-language tests – was proposed.

III
The army in India (British force stationed in India, Indian Army and
the Indian States Force) was a composition of a threefold division
 War and Indian military institutions 249
comprising the Field Force and Covering Force, both of which were
forces for frontier defence, and the Internal Security Troops, which
were responsible for safeguarding internal security against frequent
disturbances. Since the 1870s, the ‘British Army in India’ had been
maintained by the Cardwell System which stipulated an equal num-
ber of troops to be maintained at home as those sent overseas so that
‘regular drafts from the former could replace the latter and periodi-
cally replace them on overseas service’.21 By withdrawing garrisons
from self-governing colonies and reducing troop commitments in
India, Britain hoped to signal that colonies were to be responsible for
their own security and that any future engagements would demand a
greater contribution from them. Whereas the ‘British Army in India’
was recruited and trained in Britain (and then during the 1930s
increasingly at the IMA), the ‘Army in India’ was wholly supported
by Indian taxes and was under the political control of the Govern-
ment of India.22 During the interwar years much attention was given
over to considering whether British troops in India were purely for
the defence of the subcontinent or whether they could function as an
imperial reserve within a wider remit.
The constitution of the IMA was rooted in the principle of reduced
expenditure and large-scale commitment to the defence of colonies
such as India whereby an academy through its own recruits would
continue to provide officers without having to station more British
personnel in India. The idea, although consonant with the above pol-
icy, failed to fructify as hoped, since it was tied to ambiguous terms.
The Defence Sub-Committee of the First Round Table Conference,
which gave birth to the proposals that established the IMA, recom-
mended the setting up of a training college at the earliest, but it did not
prevent eligible Indian cadets for admission to Sandhurst, Woolwich
and Cranwell.23 This initial ambiguity in the conception of an ‘Indian
Training College’ – which was seen as an Indian training institution
but by no means the sole institution for Indians – left the option of
gaining higher forms of commissions for those who could go to Eng-
land wide open. When princely scions, and quite a number of them,
went to England to be educated and trained despite the presence of
an Indian academy set up in response to many of their own states’
demands, they did so since no explicit regulations forbade them.
Although conceptualized as a space where the ‘Indian Question’
could be resolved according to British authorities, the IMA was as
much a cause for resentment among Indians as it was to Britain in later
years. Questions of inclusion, assessment and commissions were the
axes along which some major issues developed and embroiled all the
stakeholders involved with the creation of the IMA.
250 Vipul Dutta
In its early years, the IMA drew candidates through joint examina-
tions in India and London. However, the idea of joint examinations
did not deliver any parity to candidates or their chances of selec-
tion, if at all it was ever meant to. Where the Indian examination
threw itself open to candidates from all over the country, the London
examination was seen as an adjunctive exercise to the main exam-
ination in India. Whitehall made repeated demands to close down
the London examination and thus to make travel to India a manda-
tory requirement for taking the examination.24 Notwithstanding the
official reason that the London examination drew a smaller number
of candidates and was thus disproportionately expensive, antipathy
towards the examination went deeper. Whitehall saw the practice
of examining candidates in the United Kingdom as a catalyst which
would open the field not only to Indians and Anglo-Indians with Brit-
ish domicile, ‘but to all Indians and Anglo-Indians with extra-Asiatic
domiciles who are British subjects . . . if the examination were to be
abolished in the future and we had in the meantime made provision
for the examination in this country of this sort of candidate, we might
be . . . in an awkward position. For the candidates in question might
then regard themselves as having a reserved right to be examined,
and the Government of India might raise objections to opening the
examination in India to this sort of candidate’.25 Opening the field of
entry to candidates with non-Indian domiciles would have been trou-
blesome in the wake of the limited number of vacancies in the IMA
(which, despite ongoing debates about the quality of the intake, was
unable to provide seats for most cadets who took the entrance exami-
nation). A common pattern of entrance test was itself problematic
for the IMA and Public Service Commission authorities in India. The
varying quality of IMA’s intake was worrying New Delhi enough to
send memoranda to Britain seeking solutions to the problem as early
as 1934. Educationally, there was a considerable gap between the
‘better competitive cadets who trained at feeder institutions like the
Prince of Wales College and the worst Indian Army and Indian State
Forces Cadets’.26 While severe competition existed among the open
category cadets who entered the IMA via competitive examination,
the reserved seats meant for cadets from the State Forces remained
largely unfilled or taken up by those who were of a much lower stand-
ard than the others leading to an absence of a margin (or a suitable
cut-off mark) for selection.27
But the problem of greater inclusion was not just India’s. Britain
was equally uneasy at the prospect of granting entry to these can-
didates given their own financial burdens and, more significantly,
 War and Indian military institutions 251
by allowing Anglo-Indians to train at Sandhurst/Woolwich, Britain
would have had to open its gates to the princes, most of whom were
clamouring to enter Sandhurst instead of Dehradun after 1932. Such
a development would have rung hollow not only with the national-
ists but would also have negated the tenuous trope of a ‘National
Institution’ with which the IMA had come to be associated. White-
hall, though perhaps conscious of the unequal and disquieting terms
on which recruitment into the Indian Army was being carried out as
opposed to the ICS and the Police, was ‘careful not to rely on analo-
gies from the ICS and IPS Exams to redress anomalies in the IMA
exams’, since in the ‘ICS and the IPS there is no racial distinction
as there is in the Indian Army now between British officers com-
ing through Sandhurst and Indian officers coming through the IMA’.
Whereas for the civil services, the latter’s London examination was
the main test with the Indian examination as an ‘annex’, for the IMA,
the examination in India was central and the London exam an ‘unim-
portant addition’.28
The case of the Anglo-Indians (both in India and abroad) provides a
ringside view of the ways in which the IMA was seen as the progenitor
of a ‘modern Indian Army’ while enabling Britain to cease granting
commissions to them from their own institutions. The whole question
of conducting joint examinations for the IMA hinged on the Anglo-
Indians and where they could be accommodated. When the Govern-
ment in India forwarded the radical proposal to scrap the London
examination in order to focus solely on India, Whitehall argued that
the Anglo-Indians represented an important source of recruitment
for the Indian Army – their small numbers being outweighed by the
high percentage of successes in the examinations. In addition to this,
the department outlined the ‘obvious advantages of getting into the
Indian Army as many boys as possible who have been educated at
English schools. So long as that source exists, it seems desirable to
use it’.29 While the joint examination system was seen as an avoidable
task, the examinees, however, were seen in a different light which in
turn made the organization of these joint examinations a necessary
exercise. Aside from the practical difficulties of testing them on an
Indian syllabus as taught in Indian schools, there were issues of how
successful cadets would join the academy and who would bear their
travel and living costs while they stayed in India.30 On a larger scale,
the position of the Anglo-Indians raised important questions on the
nature of the IMA and highlighted the careful re-calibration that was
undertaken to define who was supposed to be entering its portals and
in what number.
252 Vipul Dutta
IV
The study of the emergence of the IMA is important at several levels.
First, a more critical reading of sources already available give a more
nuanced and detailed understanding of how the academy worked in
the larger backdrop of the Indianization of the Indian Army’s officer
corps. Focusing on the IMA in its early years gives a more complex
understanding of ‘Indianization’ and ‘nationalization’ which have
hitherto been discussed in more generalized terms. The object of this
chapter is to bring into notice the vagaries, complexities and perhaps
even unintended consequences of setting up training academies like
the IMA and even the army, during a time when talk of having more
Indians into the organization resulted not just in the obvious conse-
quences of more Indians but also called into question the very ideas
and structures that came to be associated with what is now known as
the ‘Indianization debate’. Second, it is vital to see the emergence of
the IMA as a product of interwar policies and politics. Indeed, after
the outbreak of the Second World War, the British Army had ceased
to grant permanent commissions to cadets other than those training
at Sandhurst and Woolwich. Thus, the IMA rescinded its promise of
granting permanent commissions as the number of officers, British
and Indian, which would be required after the war could not be fore-
seen.31 The mere presence of a subordinate ‘Indian Sandhurst’ did not
fix the institution’s identity in clear terms. Despite formal Indian Army
Regulations of 1932 which forbade entry of Indians to Sandhurst,
cadets continued to aspire and sit for examinations to Sandhurst and
Woolwich (Woolwich remained a lynchpin for Indian hopes because
it offered training in Signals and Artillery, which the IMA did not
impart till the 1940s). Chief among them were sons of princely rulers
(who were invariably nominated), Anglo-Indians and British subjects
of ‘Asian descent’ who coveted the ‘King’s Commission’ more than
the ‘Viceroy’s Commission’ that the IMA awarded until independence.
The issue of commissions by itself was not controversial given the fact
that all cadets from the dominions joined their local forces after Sand-
hurst, but the War Office was conscious of the fact that a ‘Viceroy’s
Commission in India meant quite different from what a Governor-
General’s Commission means in a Dominion which was run by a Gov-
ernor-General’ and that this new type of officer from the IMA was
‘proposed to be used to replace VCOs’. The differing nature of com-
missions and the powers of command attendant on them within differ-
ent dominions was a cause of concern. The establishment of an Indian
Sandhurst meant little when its local graduates were not on a par with
 War and Indian military institutions 253
their counterparts in Canada or when some of their own countrymen
were serving with a higher form of commission at a higher salary and
with equal powers of command.
Several accounts on the Indian military either start or end with a
mention of the IMA as a single moment which symbolized the long
struggle over Indianization. What the institution itself stood for and
the vision behind its establishment is drowned in the welter of nation-
alist euphoria and colonial self-congratulation in being able to finally
deliver an ‘Indian Sandhurst’. It does not help either to have scant
scholarship on the late 1940s that looks at the question of decoloniza-
tion and even less which documents the history case the military in
this period. Anirudh Deshpande’s socio-political account of the colo-
nial Indian military organization skilfully attempts to locate British
military policy in the context of decolonization, albeit ‘selectively and
hypothetically’,32 but it is imperative to see the 1940s in the larger
context of decolonization because it could help explain the contours
of British military policy in India at this time more effectively. It can
hardly be contested that a more cogent explanation is called for to
explain the shift in the attitudes of Whitehall which gave ascent to
the establishment of IMA – something which could not be done at the
time of the First World War.
The interwar years were witness to a change in British strategic
thinking on the role of India. After the mitigation of the ‘Russian
threat’ in the 1920s, the notion steadily grew that India should con-
tribute to the general defence of the British Empire in a more coherent
and systematic way than in the previous century.33 However, India’s
assuming a greater share of imperial commitments was dependent
upon having a modernized and professional fighting force. The mod-
ernization and mechanization of the army at home rendered the army
in India less amenable to be replaced with the home units who were
being initiated into tank warfare while any further reductions in troop
strength for service elsewhere made the government in New Delhi
uneasy. This political climate, in which an increasingly restive India
made things difficult for the British, lent urgency to the question of the
size and cost of the British garrison in India. Tied down by the Second
World War campaigns in Europe, North Africa and the upkeep of gar-
risons in Malta and Gibraltar, and now in South and South-East Asia,
it was thus India’s potential contribution to imperial defence that came
under renewed attention. The emergence of the IMA, thus, has to be
seen against the backdrop of the interwar years in which the position
of India changed dramatically. Envisaged as a training institution, the
academy, I argue, was the product of colonial ingenuity which aimed
254 Vipul Dutta
to bring India into the net of imperial defence, while at the same time
granting an indigenous symbol of legitimation to Indian aspirations
for self-rule. At this time, the IMA reflected the British need for an
imperial reserve, while at the same time, its creation injected a degree
of professionalization and modernization into the fabric of the Indian
Army. It may have been a quid pro quo as levels of funding for Indian
defence from the British government increased during the War,34 but
it was this support which eventually created an institution that served
as the blueprint for other instructional institutions to be set up. British
colonial policy may have been self-serving as far as acquiring men and
materiel for the war was concerned, but its effects were widespread
and continues to be felt long after the war was over.
This close analysis of the IMA aims to ‘reset’ our understanding of the
ways in which Indianization and nationalization progressed. Its inaugu-
ration set off a series of manoeuvres which resulted in the crystallization
of an active network of training spaces, some that had atrophied and
some which were constructed afresh. In 1932 the ‘Indian Sandhurst’
captured the imagination of a people engaged in a struggle to have a
more national and less colonial governmental footprint. However, the
complexities of the early years of IMA pose a challenge to our under-
standing of the ways in which this footprint was to be achieved.

Notes
1 Anirudh Deshpande, British Military Policy in India: 1900–1945, Colo-
nial Constraints and Declining Power (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005).
2 Indianization of the Indian Army, or at least its earliest mention, went
back to the nineteenth century. However, its more modern avatars, as
highlighted in the decades after 1920s, largely meant the increase in the
number of Indians earning the King’s Commission and the replacement of
the British officers in India by the former. Deshpande, while making this
important observation, also remarks that it was the First World War which
was responsible in creating a ‘historical potential’ for real nationalization.
3 Brigadier M. P. Singh, History of the Indian Military Academy (Chandi-
garh: Unistar, 2007). Singh’s account is useful in understanding the intri-
cate matrix of training institutions which appeared momentarily until the
establishment of a ‘seminary’ at Addiscombe by the Company in 1810
that operated for almost half a century until the early 1860s. Follow-
ing Addiscombe came the more familiar Woolwich and Sandhurst which
gradually took on greater responsibilities to train men meant for India and
continued to do so until an ‘Indian Sandhurst’ appeared on the horizon as
a more permanent measure.
4 B. P. N. Sinha, and Sunil Chandra, Valour and Wisdom: Genesis and
Growth of the Indian Military Academy (Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publish-
ing Company, 1992).
 War and Indian military institutions 255
5 M. P. Singh, History of the Indian Military Academy.
6 Chandar Sundaram, ‘“Treated with Scant Attention”: The Imperial Cadet
Corps, Indian Nobles, and Anglo-Indian Policy, 1897–1917,’ The Journal
of Military History, vol. 77, no. 1 (January 2013), pp. 41–70.
7 Indivar Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance: State and Class in India,
1939–1945’, Past and Present, vol. 176, no. 1 (2002), pp. 187–221, has
discussed the ‘differential impact’ the Second World War had on India.
Eschewing the imperialist or nationalist frames of analysis, Kamtekar
sheds light on how two different provinces – Punjab and Bengal – fared
differently during the war on economic indices such as commodity prices
and industrial output, thereby offering insights into the class composi-
tion and relations in the areas, itself a picture of non-homogenous pattern
of development during the war in contrast to the general assumptions of
nationalist and imperialist approaches.
8 Sinha and Chandra, Valour and Wisdom, p. 155. The onset of the Second
World War in 1939 soon changed the ‘complexion of things’ in the words
of the authors. The steady reduction in the lengths of the courses until
1941 resulted in a sharp increase in the number of commissioned cadets.
From a total of over 500 cadets who passed out before the war since the
academy’s inauguration to an astonishing 3,800 (both Indian and Brit-
ish) who were commissioned during the Second World War, this sixfold
increase in the output played a key role in rooting the IMA on firmer
ground.
9 Proposals for the improvement of the quality of Indian Army Cadets
admitted to the Indian Military Academy, 20 March 1936. Tabled by Mr.
Turnbull (Private Secretary to the Permanent Under-Secretary of State,
India Office), File IOR/L/MIL/7/19155, India Office Records (IOR), Brit-
ish Library (BL), London.
10 Ibid. The original Scheme for Kitchener College was put into effect in
1928, when nine-month courses were imparted to train Viceroy’s Com-
missioned Officers. However, by 1931, the scheme was abolished on
grounds of ‘economy’ and was seen as an ‘unnecessary extravagance’.
11 Situation Report from the Governor of Punjab, 31 July 1937, Memoran-
dum prepared by Committee of Members of both houses of the Central
Legislature, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19155, BL. A common grouse against
IMA’s policy of expelling underperforming cadets (even at the advanced
level of training) was that it hindered the cadet’s chances of getting a place
at other universities because of the nature of training received at the acad-
emy which made ‘university education’ a completely different ball game.
Efforts were made to make education at feeder colleges uniform enough
for both avenues as opposed to previous instances when feeder colleges
taught disciplines related largely to the military.
12 Ibid.
13 C. J. Dewey, ‘The Education of a Ruling Caste: The Indian Civil Service
in the era of Competitive Examination’, The English Historical Review,
vol. 88, no. 347 (April 1973), pp. 262–85.
14 Minute by Military Department, Whitehall, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19144, BL,
London.
15 The context of the aforementioned incident bears a dual import – it
highlights the suspicions that were cast on such individuals, but more
256 Vipul Dutta
significantly, it also goes on to reflect the urgency with which candidates
were sought for the fledgling institution and the readiness to water down
seemingly ‘ossified’ perceptions. The onset of war five years later and the
surge in recruitment from all quarters lent credence to the contingent
nature of ‘identity’ and it helped undermine (but not obliterate) the ficti-
tious conception of the ‘martial races’.
16 Minute by Political Department, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19145, BL, London.
17 Ibid. The minute mentions clearly the names of the likes of Raja of Sangli,
whose two sons were at the Prince of Wales College, later withdrawn to
be educated to England. The Maharaja of Rajpipla had secured entrance
to Woolwich for his heir apparent as well.
18 Ibid.
19 File IOR/L/MIL/7/19145: 1934–1941, BL.
20 Ibid.
21 Brian Bond, British Military Policy Between the Two World Wars (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 99. The Cardwell Reforms were the
brainchild of Edward Cardwell, Secretary of State for War, 1868–74, and
were aimed at the reorganization of the British Army after the Crimean
War (1853–56). The reforms were part of the larger strategy through which
a sizeable expeditionary force could be formed during an emergency. Until
the 1870s, a large proportion of the army was stationed abroad than at
home including India. Moreover, once a unit was sent overseas, its sub-
sequent postings from one garrison to the other meant a virtual exile for
soldiers which not only reduced troop strength in Britain but also acted as
a deterrent to recruitment.
22 Srinath Raghavan, ‘“Protecting the Raj: The Army in India and Internal
Security”, c. 1919–1939’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 16, no. 3
(2005), pp. 253–79. The author makes a careful delineation of the terms
‘Army in India’, ‘British Army in India’ and ‘Indian Army’ which is useful
to foreground the context in which debates for Indianization took place.
This is because several contemporary estimates confound the question of
army reform in the interwar years by using the terms interchangeably.
Whereas the functions of these formations overlapped, the debates on
Indianization were largely related to the non-representative character of
the British Army in India. On the other hand during and after the Second
World War the discourse of the debate shifted to address the bias with
which IMA graduates were asked to serve in the Indian Army replacing
former Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers, while Indian graduates from
Sandhurst served on an equal footing in the British Army in India with a
King’s Commission in hand.
23 Excerpts from the Parliamentary Notice, Session 1933–34, Military
Department, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19148, BL.
24 Letter from LW Homan to JA Simpson (Military Department, Whitehall),
3 December 1932, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19127, BL.
25 Ibid.
26 Letter from HI Macdonald, Army Department, New Delhi to SK Brown,
Joint Secretary, Military Department, Whitehall, 1 March 1934, File
IOR/L/MIL/7/19145, BL.
27 Ibid. Letter from Philip Mason, Under Secretary, Government of India
to the Secretary, Military Department, India Office. The cadets from the
 War and Indian military institutions 257
Indian State Forces were required to pass the same preliminary test as the
Indian Army cadets – i.e. the Indian Army Special Certificate of Education
with a satisfactory command over ‘colloquial English’. This meant there
was little competition for State Forces Cadets and all those who acquired
these certificates gained entry into the IMA.
28 Remarks by J. A. Simpson (Military Department, Whitehall) to L. W.
Homan, 3 December 1932, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19127, BL.
29 Minute by the Defence Department, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19123, BL.
30 Letter from Deputy Secretary, Government of India, to Secretary Military
Department, 4 April 1932, File IOR/L/MIL/7/19123, BL, London. The
Government in India thought it was impossible to ‘expect a successful
candidate from England to . . . reach India in time to join the Academy by
1st October. . . . It was for this reason they proposed . . . that candidates
(from England) should be considered successful and admitted to the sec-
ond term . . . and (should be) counted against the vacancies of that term’.
Incidentally, this was the same system which operated in the case of the
admission of Indian candidates to Sandhurst and Woolwich.
31 Press Note by the Defence Department, New Delhi, 21 November 1939,
File IOR/L/MIL/7/19157, BL, London. Press Notes like the one men-
tioned were one among many which were issued at this time. Stopping
short of promising a permanent commission, these notices held out the
prospect of acquiring one, subject to proper recommendations. Whereas
the issue of the nature of commission was kept aside (through the use
of careful words), formal entry requirements remained the same (no fee
was charged). The overall effect of this campaign was that while short-
term policies ran the IMA, cadets continued to train there through formal
entrance procedures, giving the impression that normal practices of pass-
ing out would be maintained.
32 Deshpande, British Military Policy in India, 1900–1939, p. 187.
33 Bond, British Military Policy Between the Two World Wars, p. 102.
According to the author, the whole period of the interwar years could be
viewed in terms of the gradual reconciliation of these discordant views of
the Indian Army’s priorities – traditional frontier defence or broader impe-
rial commitments.
34 Ibid., p. 112. In December 1933 the British Government took the momen-
tous decision to make an annual contribution of £1.5 million to Indian
defence. A month later Lord Hailsham, Secretary of State for War, in effect
asked the India office for a quid pro quo in the form of a division in India
earmarked as an Imperial Reserve. Even though the Commander-in-Chief
and Viceroy were opposed to it, by 1937 they had grown sympathetic
towards the idea of creating an imperial reserve in India in view of the
Japanese threat. Indian consent had a lot to do with finance: as the Viceroy
put it bluntly, ‘You have the money – we have the men.’
11 ‘Home’ front
Indian soldiers and civilians
in Britain, 1939–45
Florian Stadtler

South Asian involvement in the early phase of the Second World War
in Britain has received only scant attention. This lacuna is interesting
for a number of reasons, not least since Britain is increasingly looking
towards this subject matter as part of its own articulation of a diverse,
multicultural nation. This has been particularly evident during the cente-
nary commemorations of the First World War in 2014. For example, the
British Library has made the Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood collection
available online through the Europeana collections and its own online
manuscripts portal.1 This series of photographs depicts Indian soldiers on
the Western Front as well as in Britain. The BBC too has devoted much
air time to the Indian role in the conflict, including the two-part television
documentary ‘The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire’ broadcast
in August 2014, focusing on the troops from across the British Empire
enlisted to fight.2 While the deployments of British Indian Army troops on
the Western Front and elsewhere have been brought to much wider public
attention, the same cannot be said of South Asian participation in the
Second World War – the last BBC documentary, ‘Forgotten Volunteers’,
part of the Corporation’s Timewatch series, dates back to June 1999 and
focused in the main on East Asia and the Burma front.3 South Asian par-
ticipation in the European theatre has received even less public attention.
Nevertheless, in fictional form, perhaps one of the better-known
representations of the South Asian Second World War soldier is Sapper
Kirpal Singh, a key character in Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize–win-
ning novel, The English Patient, played by the actor Naveen Andrews
in the Oscar-winning movie of the novel.4 Singh is taken under the
wing of Lord Suffolk, who teaches him how to defuse mines and booby
traps. Posted in northern Italy, he forms a close bond with the Cana-
dian nurse Hana, taking care of an English patient in a monastery.
Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island also offers a different perspective
on the Second World War by focusing on Royal Air Force pilots from
 ‘Home’ front 259
the Caribbean. As mentioned, a few BBC documentaries have detailed
some of these soldiers’ stories but have not had a significant impact on
public perception in Britain where the European theatre is considered
to be largely a ‘white’ European war with Britain standing ‘alone’ to
fight the might of Nazi imperialism. More recently, The Princess Spy
(2006) explored the life of the Special Operations Executive wireless
operator Noor Inayat Khan, who was infiltrated into France in 1944.
Later captured in Paris, she was interrogated by the Gestapo and then
executed in Dachau Concentration Camp. A memorial dedicated to
her was inaugurated in 2013 and stands in London’s Gordon Square.
Recent years have seen a wider process of retrospective commemo-
ration, for example at the yearly service in June at the Chattri memo-
rial on the South Downs near Brighton. This site was used during the
First World War as a cremation ground for Sikh and Hindu soldiers
who had died in special military hospitals on Britain’s southern coast.
Ironically, the area was off limits during the Second World War and
the Chattri Memorial was damaged because of target practice during
army training in the area.5 The now-annual event has become a focal
point for the commemoration of South Asian servicemen and women
from different conflicts, including the Second World War.
Particularly in relation to the period 1939–45, the preconception
persists that Britain ‘stood alone’ as an embattled island left to fend
for itself. For many this notion lies at the heart of the articulation
of a resilient British character that remains central to the country’s
understanding of nationhood. This chapter seeks to challenge some
of these myths by focusing on the presence and participation of South
Asians resident in Britain in the country’s efforts during the Second
World War. Some contributed as combatants, some as civilians. These
contributions raise wider questions about citizenship and divided loy-
alties, some of which were apparent to participants. Indeed, as India
remained under colonial rule, despite an accelerated campaign for self-
government and independence, many South Asians in Britain com-
mitted themselves only reluctantly with a main focus on work in civil
defence rather than active military service, which caused a rift among
South Asian activists and campaigners.
My interest in these narratives stems from a series of images and
radio programmes from the BBC’s Indian Section of the Eastern Ser-
vice, which are reproduced in George Orwell’s 1943 collection, Talking
to India.6 One image features a group of South Asian soldiers stand-
ing around a BBC microphone and is accompanied by the caption,
‘Hello Punjab – A soldier of the Indian contingent broadcasting to his
family in India from a B.B.C. studio’.7 Images of broadcasting Indian
260 Florian Stadtler
soldiers as part of wartime propaganda featured in many publications,
including the magazines London Calling: BBC Empire Broadcasting
and Indian Information, published fortnightly by the Government
of India, which became a widely used tool during the war to shape
public opinion among the English-speaking public in India. Both of
these publications offer a useful indication of the manifold theatres of
operation as well as the scale of South Asian involvement in and con-
tribution to Britain’s war effort. They also feature reflective glimpses
of how South Asians resident in Britain engaged with the wartime
reality. Orwell’s collection is particularly revealing in this regard. For
example, in the broadcast for the Indian Section of the BBC’s Empire
Service ‘Open Letter to a Nazi’, R. R. Desai directly addresses a char-
acter called Hans, whom he had met in London before the war. The
talk reflects on the nature of fascism, its relation to wider considera-
tions of freedom and democracy and why it needs to be resisted. In this
respect, the broadcast offered a didactic, well-structured argument to
the English-speaking Indian listener in an attempt to shape an intellec-
tual elite’s opinion to counter propaganda, particularly the broadcasts
by Subhas Chandra Bose from Berlin on Azad Hind Radio. This was
of much concern to India Office, War Office and BBC officials.8 Impor-
tantly, the choice of speaker and writer was seen as crucial – this pro-
gramme was written by an Indian in London for an English-speaking
Indian audience in British India. The programme was commissioned
by Zulfikar Ali Bokhari and was broadcast on 13 August 1942 and
belonged to a wider series of ‘Open Letters’.9
Desai formed part of a larger cohort of Indian broadcasters and
script writers employed by the BBC. Many of these were left-lean-
ing intellectuals, some involved with pressure groups in London for
Indian independence. As is well known, George Orwell worked as a
talks producer alongside Programme Director Zulfikar Ali Bokhari at
the Indian Section of the BBC’s Eastern Service, which formed part of
the corporation’s Overseas Service. While the majority of the Eastern
Service’s output was in Indian languages, necessitating a diversity of
regional language speakers to be employed by the BBC, including in
Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Tamil, 45 minutes slots per day were
set aside for broadcasts in English for Indian audiences. Notable South
Asian broadcasters working for the BBC in English include the writ-
ers Ahmed Ali and Mulk Raj Anand; zoologist and cultural critic
Cedric Dover; musician, writer and broadcaster Narayana Menon,
who was responsible for musical programming; novelist Venu Chitale
and political activist Krishnarao Shelvankar, among others. Many of
these broadcasters had links to the Indian independence movement
 ‘Home’ front 261
with connections to Krishna Menon’s London-based pressure group,
the India League. Many were also involved in civil defence work, par-
ticularly as ARP wardens.
Orwell described the Indian Section’s English output as ‘honest
propaganda’, though whether propaganda can ever be ‘honest’ is of
course a matter for debate.10 Nevertheless, these samples of radio pro-
grammes produced by a London-based South Asian team of writers
and broadcasters for a South Asian audience in British India are an
important snapshot of how South Asians resident in Britain during
the war responded to and engaged with their metropolitan environ-
ment. As such, they offer a unique view of the conflict. Charged with
broadcasting propaganda to India after Britain’s declaration of war on
behalf of India and the Empire without prior consultation of Indian
leaders, Whitehall officials and ministers in the India Office and War
Office sought to impress on the Indian population more broadly and,
more specifically on an educated English-speaking elite, not just the
gravity of the situation but also the importance of India’s support for
the British war effort. This became particularly pressing when Subhas
Chandra Bose started to broadcast anti-British propaganda to India
from Berlin in 1942. The Indian Section of the Overseas Service was
founded in May 1940 as a direct response to Nazi Germany’s attempt
to exploit the nationalist grievances regarding the manner in which
India was perceived lacking of public support for Britain’s war effort.
Such public perception in Britain was of course in sharp contrast to
the pledges of monetary and moral support of the princely states. The
Indian Section was charged with bolstering and shoring up Indian
public opinion, and it fell largely to Orwell and Bokhari to recruit a
range of South Asian writers and broadcasters who would write and
record programmes for broadcast. This process was not easy, given
that many had to reconcile their left-leaning politics and support for
Indian independence with producing propaganda broadcasts, and
such negotiations of their own conscience provided plenty of conflict
while working for the BBC.
Susheila Nasta has charted this in its minutiae in her analysis of
the friendship between George Orwell and Mulk Raj Anand.11 Orwell
and Bokhari were able to assemble a wide range of South Asian public
intellectuals whose views on Indian independence were well known.
Why then did they agree to join the BBC and help generate what was
in effect British propaganda to be broadcast to India’s educated mid-
dle-class radio listenership? This can in part be attributed to the anti-
fascist activism with which many of the Indian intellectuals recruited
to work for the Indian Section had aligned themselves. Indeed, this
262 Florian Stadtler
was not far removed from the position of the Krishna Menon–led
India League, which aligned its campaign for Indian self-determina-
tion with the anti-fascist fight for freedom and democracy.12 In terms
of programming at the BBC, Anand’s collaboration with Orwell, who
was initially hired as talks assistant, was significant and their collabo-
ration shaped particularly the Arts output of the Indian Section.
However, Anand needed much persuasion to join. Anand had previ-
ously rejected working for the BBC and it was Orwell who convinced
him to change his mind.13 As Susheila Nasta points out, though Anand
had severe reservations about a British government that was commit-
ted to fight fascism in Europe while restricting freedoms in India and
resisting its demand for self-rule, ‘Anand’s divided perspective shifted
significantly after Hitler’s invasion of Russia.’14
Anand’s contribution to the BBC offers an interesting snapshot of
the multifaceted nature of these writers’ work. His output was not
limited to art; he also wrote radio broadcasts which engaged directly
with the reality of wartime Britain. He is responsible for a series of
programmes which reveal an important glimpse of 1940s London life,
evoking a city under siege and internalized by a perceptive novelist
observer who had made the city his home for the previous 20 years.
The result was the programme ‘London as I see it’, first broadcast
on 14 February 1945 and recently reprinted in the literary magazine
Wasafiri.15 Anand describes a Blitz-ravished London, contemplating
its ‘scarred face’ as he walks through it. Anand had previously been
involved with several other broadcasts which sought to showcase the
atmosphere and deprivations of Britain in wartime to a wider Indian
audience.16 Anand celebrates the spirit of London, highlighting how
‘heroism is not always so heroic as the attempt by men to adapt them-
selves to their surroundings during times when the odds are against
them’.17 He commends the resilience of Londoners while highlighting
how, in the face of adversity, the city had undergone not just dra-
matic changes to its skyline but also in character. Anand gestures to
the wider picture. He argues that through its experience of intense
bombardment the city had now become aligned with other cities under
siege – Leningrad, Moscow, Chungking and Calcutta. He concludes
that ‘one must cultivate certain virtues if one is to build up what has
been destroyed, manhood, patience, courage, sensibility and poise’.18
Anand’s perspective is distinctly international and he adopts the posi-
tion of the outsider to relay to his Indian listener a personal experi-
ence, yet he manages to bring this knowledge to a different audience
by highlighting a universal resilience in adversity. In this instance we
can make connections to the ambivalent way in which Indian soldiers
 ‘Home’ front 263
and non-combatants in Britain connected and related to their own
wartime work and experience.
The situation for South Asians living in Britain differed. While there
was resistance towards conscription into the British Army, many who
were members of the pressure group the India League, including its
secretary V. K. Krishna Menon, contributed to the war effort as Air
Raid Precaution (ARP) wardens and in other areas of civil defence.
South Asians resident in Britain were involved not only in a single-
issue campaign for Indian independence in Britain but, more impor-
tantly, took up a range of issues concerning social justice and equality.
For example, Krishna Menon worked as a lawyer as well as a Labour
Councillor for the Borough of St Pancras. According to his biographer,
T. J. S. George, for Menon the Second World War required a dual
approach. Menon saw himself as having a local duty to St Pancras and
as being responsible for providing the necessary leadership to his con-
stituents. As Rozina Visram points out, Menon served with two others
on a reduced team of the council.19 He also acted as an air-raid warden
and was instrumental in moving a motion in the council to improve the
safety and working conditions in air-raid shelters and posts for attend-
ants. While he apparently conducted his war work with great rigour
and courage, his campaigning activities for Indian independence in
London did not stall. Menon and the India League used the debate
around the fight against fascism and for freedom to bolster the call for
Indian self-determination. Indeed, India Office Records suggest clearly
the larger question at stake for India’s participation in the war: ‘Would
Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into a war, or a willing
ally cooperating with her in the prosecution of and the defence of true
democracy? Congress support would mean the greatest moral asset.’20
An article in the Colonial Information Bulletin, published in London
on 18 September 1939, further elaborates this point. It clearly outlines
that the pledges of support by Indian princes and rajas are not a true
reflection of public opinion of the Indian people and stresses again that
‘India has always been opposed to Nazism and the policy of Munich
betrayals’.21 But what is reiterated in the article, which the India Office
assumes is written by Menon, is that India’s right to self-determination
and treatment with equality is paramount. In this respect he argues
that the Indian position is two-pronged – on the one hand struggling
for the right of the country to manage its own affairs and on the other
fighting against Nazism.
As mentioned, in his role as councillor Menon participated in air-
raid precaution work, yet he took a different stance on the issue of
conscription and joining the army in Britain. When asked by an Indian
264 Florian Stadtler
student about the question of enlistment, he responded, according to a
report, that ‘each individual must be guided by his own conscience.’22
But, he would not join.
Chuni Lal Katial and Menon were contemporaries, working in local
politics in London as well as being part of the India League. Katial was
a close friend of Gandhi’s and a staunch supporter of the Indian inde-
pendence movement. He held long-standing Gandhian principles of
selfless service to humanity, reflected in his medical work and the set-
ting up of the Finsbury Health Centre. Katial settled in Britain in 1927
and, as a trained doctor, opened a practice in London’s East End in
1929. Katial involved himself in local politics and was elected to Fins-
bury borough council in 1934. He also served as deputy mayor and
later as mayor of Finsbury. As a council member he worked tirelessly
for the borough as chairman of the Air Raid Precautions Medical Ser-
vice and Food Control Committee. He was also a first aid medical
officer.23 In an oral history interview he recalls a meeting with Lady
Mountbatten at Birla House after he returned to India in 1947:

She looked at me and said, ‘we meet at funny places.’ I said, ‘Yes,
we do.’ She was the Colonel Commandant of the St. John’s Ambu-
lance Brigade in London during the Second World War and she
used to come to Finsbury, which was my borough, my constitu-
ency, of which I was the Mayor, in the evening to see civil defence
arrangements and shelters. Then we would meet and walk over
and have a drink together in the Mayor’s Parlour.24

The meeting with Edwina Mountbatten is striking and highlights the

multifaceted nature of his work. Important to note here is his wider
commitment, like Krishna Menon, to work for greater equality and
social justice at both local and international levels.
South Asians were present on the home front, which is well docu-
mented in propaganda pamphlets of the time, yet in the post-war pro-
cess of memorialization their contribution has been marginalized and
has largely remained unrecognized. As previously highlighted, South
Asians volunteered in civil defence, as Air Raid Precaution wardens
(Sudhindranath Ghose in Ealing, Krishna Menon in Camden, C. L.
Katial in Finsbury) or ambulance workers. For instance, a group of
Indians formed and manned the auxiliary ambulance station in Augus-
tus Street, St Pancras, London. This station was set up at the sugges-
tion of Dorai Ross. Its personnel was drawn mainly from the Indian
community in London, and it was known as Auxiliary Ambulance
Station 50 (Indian Section). The unit included some 100 women and
 ‘Home’ front 265
men who were from a range of professional backgrounds, including
doctors and barristers.25
Another example is the Indian Comforts Fund which was inaugu-
rated in December 1939 by the Dowager Viscountess Chelmsford. It
was a registered war charity approved by the Admiralty, War Office
and Air Ministry to provide for the war needs of Indian troops in
Europe and lascar seamen, who were often stranded for long periods
of time in Britain as sea routes became increasingly disrupted. During
the war years, an estimated 30,000 Indian seamen arrived in British
ports annually. The Fund’s operations were centred at India House,
Aldwych, where the Indian High Commissioner had offered much-
needed space as a depot and accommodation for the working parties,
including the food parcel packing centre.
The Fund was run by British and Indian women and took respon-
sibility for the welfare of Indian soldiers as well as sailors of the Mer-
chant and Indian navies. By 1945 the Fund packed over 1.6 million
food parcels to be despatched to prisoner of war (POW) camps in
Europe.26 It also organized knitting parties to supply warm clothing to
Indian sailors stranded in Britain and POWs in the camps in Germany
and Italy. At its peak, there were some 100,000 knitters across the
country, with one of the largest groups in Oxford numbering some
400, who the Fund supplied with wool and whose work it oversaw.
This enabled the packing and dispatch of over 75,400 parcels with
warm clothing.
In 1941, the Indian Comforts Fund estimated there were some
2,300 Indian POWs in Europe, 550 of which were seamen. The Fund
packed food parcels for them, which were paid for by the Indian
Red Cross.27 The Indian contingent, too, was cared for by the Indian
Comforts Fund, with the present of garments as well as support for
the weekly leave parties, which were accommodated at the mosque
in Woking.28 As an entirely voluntary organization, the Indian Com-
forts Fund worked in close cooperation with the Indian Red Cross
and St John’s Ambulance Service. The Fund was officially next of kin
for all Indian POWs and civilian internees in Europe. This enabled
it to provide the quarterly next-of-kin parcels which included cloth-
ing, toothbrush, toothpaste, razors and shaving soap, washing soap,
pencils, combs, bootlaces as well as other essentials. It coordinated
the packing of food parcels, which were regularly shipped to the Inter-
national Red Cross in Geneva, from where they would be sent on to
the internment camps. The work of the Fund reached its peak in 1943
when the number of Indian internees in Europe had risen to 14,000.
The parcels contained Indian staples including dhal (pulse), curry
266 Florian Stadtler
powder, ghee (clarified butter), atta (wheat flour) and rice to the same
calorific value of those for British soldiers. In Britain, the charity also
supported the entertainment of Indian troops and seamen, providing
gifts such as gramophone records, books and sporting equipment. The
Fund organized weekly leave parties for Indian soldiers to visit Lon-
don and introduced a visiting scheme for hospitalized servicemen. The
Fund’s workload grew exponentially through the war years until it
was wound up at the end of 1945. The Indian Comforts Fund high-
lights especially the way in which Indian soldiers, seamen and civilians
engaged in the war effort were supported by the organization. It also
serves as an example how people across divisions of class and gender
participated in this charitable work for an organization which com-
manded support across political lines.
The early South Asian contribution to the war effort in Britain was
largely shaped by a resident civilian population, but was bolstered in
1940 by the arrival of three animal transport companies of the Royal
Indian Army Service Corps which had seen action in France and were
evacuated in June 1940. Their role has now been largely forgotten.
Known in Britain at the time as the Indian contingent, its personnel
worked on the home front and featured heavily in wartime propa-
ganda. One such example is a radio interview between the commander
of the Indian contingent, Lieutenant Colonel Reginald Hills, Mohamed
Akbar Khan of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps and an unnamed
newly arrived Indian Flying Officer who served with the Royal Air
Force.29 These men were among the first British Indian Army troops to
participate in military action in the Second World War. Their story can
be pieced together through archival holdings at several UK and Indian
repositories, including the National Archives of India, the Imperial
War Museum, National Archives, Kew and the India Office Records
at the British Library.
Propaganda materials in Britain and India, including Orwell’s col-
lection of BBC talks and illustrated photographs, referred to these
troops only as ‘the Indian contingent’. This designation followed as the
original name of the force from India in December 1939 on despatch,
K6, had led to difficulties in recognizing it in Britain.30 The Times
reported the arrival of Indian units in France in December 1939. The
newspaper saw it as an example of Indian contributions to the war
effort and a statement of Indian opposition to Nazism: ‘for even those
with a political grievance against Great Britain are as convinced as
are the people of this country that existing German policy and meth-
ods must be eliminated if the human family is to live in harmony and
progress.’31 It is clear that this is of course part of a wider propaganda
 ‘Home’ front 267
campaign designed to underscore that the British Empire was united
in its fight against fascism and Nazi Germany’s aggression. The arti-
cle, then, must be read as an example of how this early deployment
was instrumentalized in Britain to showcase Indian support for Brit-
ain’s war effort, which was severely doubted given the fallout from the
widely reported adverse response of Congress leaders to the Viceroy
Linlithgow’s declaration of war on behalf of India without consulta-
tion of India’s political parties. Indeed this was a contravention of
any pledges made previously by the Viceroy and the Government of
India that no Indian troops should be moved out of India without the
Central Legislature being informed. Dissatisfaction was compounded
by knowledge of the fact that the British government had consulted all
other dominions of the Empire before the joint declaration of war on
behalf of Britain and its Empire had been made.
The situation had been woefully mishandled by the British govern-
ment and the Government of India. Previously, the country had been
able to rely on large-scale Indian support during the First World War,
with some 1.4 million South Asian combatants and non-combatants
fighting for the Empire.32 Even M. K. Gandhi, then in London, sub-
mitted a petition to the India Office pledging support from the Indian
community in Britain and led the establishment of the Indian Field
Ambulance Corps.33
The year 1914 was invoked in many propaganda publications of the
1940s, highlighting the unprecedented deployment of Indian troops in
Europe and wider Indian support for the British war effort.34 How-
ever, in the wake of 1918, when many promises for greater autonomy
for India had ended in disappointment and consequently a movement
pushing for full independence was fully underway, the outbreak of war
in Europe in 1939 and any potential involvement from India proved
a much more challenging situation to handle. Thus, the Government
of India and India Office officials were working hard to prevent the
fallout from becoming a total public relations debacle.
On 28 September 1939, Lord Hailey published an article in the BBC
magazine The Listener outlining the many ways in which India would
support the British war effort. Hailey, too, focuses initially on Indian
contributions to the First World War. He arrives at the conclusion that
the First World War played a significant part in awakening a political
consciousness in India and in generating an increased awareness of
the geopolitical position of the country in world affairs. He maintains
that the 1935 Government of India Act ‘demand[s] that we should
respect to the full the position of its elected representatives, but we
have everything to gain if we can carry them with us’.35 Hailey stresses
268 Florian Stadtler
the importance of bringing together a consensus on civil and military
activity as the bedrock of any colonial war effort. Hailey offers a rela-
tively balanced interpretation of the Congress point of view, explain-
ing clearly its anti-fascist stance as well as its demand for a clearer
position on any future autonomous status of India. Nevertheless, his
article obscures the fact that the Imperial Government’s unilateral dec-
laration of war led to the resignation of Congress ministers and reluc-
tance to support the war effort.
After its evacuation from France during June 1940, the Indian con-
tingent was headquartered at Shirley Common, Derbyshire. In the
late summer of 1940 it was decided to concentrate the contingent in
Southern Command with only one company as an animal transport
company and to mechanize the remainder for its future role.36 This is
an interesting decision, considering that the British Army requested
Animal Transport Companies from the British Indian Army precisely
because Britain had mechanized its own transport companies after the
First World War. Indeed, Hills recommended that, in the light of recent
operations, animal transport companies should be retained as they
had ways of accessing and overcoming terrain where transport infra-
structure had been destroyed; particularly in areas where mechanized
transport was precluded, animal transport became a necessity. It is
also seen as more economical for short hauls and for close work with
advance troops, as was the case in the Saar area.37 Official records con-
tain conflicting information about the Indian contingent, its position
and its ongoing deployment in the United Kingdom.
Formed at the request of the War Office in October 1939, the Indian
contingent was constituted out of four animal transport companies
consisting of 16 troops with support units to administer and main-
tain them.38 They were seconded from the British Indian Army’s Royal
Indian Army Service Corps (RIASC) to provide logistical transport sup-
port for formations in the British Expeditionary Force sent to France
in 1939. In addition to mule transport companies, other units were
mobilized so that it would be self-contained. They were evacuated at
Dunkirk and other ports in Northern France and stationed in Brit-
ain until the end of 1943 and featured in much publicity during their
time in Britain. On initial dispatch, the contingent numbered approxi-
mately 1,800 personnel and 1,950 animals. In May 1941, the contin-
gent increased by three mule companies was partly mechanized and
also received arms training. The Indian Army Lists of 1942 included
the companies which had been stationed in Europe.39 By early 1942,
the contingent was placed under the command of the Commander in
 ‘Home’ front 269
Chief of the Home Forces and subsequently moved to Scottish Com-
mand for operational training together with the 52nd (Light) Divi-
sion.40 By that time the contingent had grown to approximately 3,400
men responsible for 3,400 animals. While seconded to Southern Com-
mand, where they helped with sea defences, they were also regarded as
useful to provide publicity to highlight to an embattled Britain that the
Empire supported the mother country in its hour of need. It is interest-
ing to note here how little attention this early example of South Asian
contributions to the war effort has received subsequently. While it
needs to be acknowledged that the numbers were small by comparison
with later large-scale deployments in northern Africa and the Middle
East, archival evidence suggests that the contributions of these troops
were highly valued at the time. A range of photographs, official public-
ity materials, letters and oral history interviews attest to their work.
Although incomplete, the Indian contingent’s war diaries also survive.
Why then has the contribution of these men remained so little
known, despite their high visibility at the time? Was it because theirs
was mainly a supporting role? Compared with a total of 2.5 million
men the British Indian Army had mobilized by 1945, they constituted
only 0.08 per cent of total South Asian military recruitments. Never-
theless, given the recent trend to memorialize and commemorate all
manner of diverse wartime contributions, this lacuna seems striking
and is only a further example of a lingering and ongoing public view
that Britain ‘stood alone’ when this narrative is actually much more
complex. One might also want to question contemporary public per-
ceptions of Britain in the 1940s, which is represented as largely mono-
cultural when in fact the population’s make-up is actually much more
diverse than usually acknowledged.41 For example, Indians in London
involved in civil defence, Indian lascar sailors as part of the Merchant
Marine keeping supply lines open and the charitable organization the
Indian Comforts Fund, based at India House, Aldwych, were testa-
ment to a settled South Asian community.
Three crucial questions emerge here. Why have the contributions
made by South Asians to the war effort in the Second World War
remained little acknowledged? How could Britain’s collective memory
of the Second World War today be expanded by making visible these
archival holdings, and what impact might this have on how the South
Asian community in Britain engages with what can be revealed as a
shared history in which the entire population is mutually invested?
How do we deal with the marginalized stories of these South Asians
beyond tokenistic forms of cultural historical retrieval, and what
270 Florian Stadtler
impact does this have on how the war is commemorated and how the
legacy of Britain’s so-called Finest Hour is interpreted?
In recent years there has been a slight shift in the prevalent narrative
of Britain and the Second World War. In public discourse, the notion
that she ‘stood alone’ is in the process of being reformulated. Perhaps
this is a spill-over effect from similar efforts in relation to the First
World War where the narratives are being refocused to include the con-
tributions of soldiers from the former Empire in wider public debates.
It is also a reflection of how history becomes a prism through which
a contemporary reality is viewed and refracted, where such narratives
become increasingly privileged to represent the culturally diverse pre-
sent. Such processes are of course fraught with potential pitfalls of
perhaps overemphasizing the importance of marginal stories.
I want to return, however, to the Animal Transport Companies.
When the Ministry of Defence (MOD) received an enquiry from the
BBC journalist Anita Anand, then working for the Southall-based
channel Zee TV in 2000, in relation to Paddy Ashdown’s father John,
who was a captain with 32nd Animal Transport Company of the
RIASC in France, the MOD replied that, after two days of searches in
their archives, they were unable to find any record of Indian troops at
Dunkirk.42 Shortly before the company’s evacuation, John Ashdown
was reprimanded for threatening to disobey an order, which stipu-
lated that he should abandon the Indian troops and their mules on
the beaches in France. He refused and insisted on their evacuation
along with all the other British troops. A very short note in the India
Office files marginally alludes to the incident.43 The company was part
of the Flanders withdrawal of units and arrived on the outskirts of
Dunkirk. The unit embarked on 25 May and after arrival in Britain
was despatched to Aldershot. The unit suffered one casualty; ship-
ping for animals, equipment and supplies was impossible and orders
were received to abandon these. 25th Company was also evacuated at
Dunkirk on 29 May, and 29th Company, previously stationed in Le
Mans, embarked at St Nazaire on 17 June. The rest of K6 was also
evacuated. One exception was the 22nd Company, which was sec-
onded to Saar Force for service on the Maginot Line and subsequently
captured. From Aldershot, the evacuated contingent was then initially
stationed in Glasgow, Doncaster and its headquarters established at
Shirley Common, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire. Despite pleas by the
Government of India for their return, it was subsequently decided to
keep the contingent in Britain. They were employed in local defence,
25th and 32nd being allotted a sector of the Garrison defences and
the 25th working with beach defence groups. The Indian contingent
 ‘Home’ front 271
was universally praised by its commanders for their admirable con-
duct and their discipline during the retreat and evacuation. However,
as the units had not been armed and trained to shoot, they had been a
liability during the chaotic evacuation from northern France and had
to be moved away from danger.
The retention of the units in Britain was driven by political consid-
erations: ‘they should be employed in this country in as conspicuous
a capacity as possible for political reasons. At a time when troops
from all parts of the Empire are concentrated in this country for the
defence of Britain, it is unfortunate that there are no fighting units of
the Indian Army to take their full share. I suggest, however, that the
fact of there being Indian troops present should be allowed to have full
significance.’44 Furthermore, anecdotal evidence also suggests that the
British public also appreciated their presence. Units were posted across
the United Kingdom in the Midlands, Devon, North Wales and Scot-
land; leave parties made frequent trips to London, and their work was
widely reported. Unlike South Asian soldiers during the First World
War, the Indian contingent interacted fairly freely with the British pub-
lic until their return to India in early 1944. Although a simple search
of The Times or The Guardian archive would have provided a lot of
evidence of their presence and activities, it seems the general lack of
awareness of the contributions of South Asian troops in Europe in the
early years of the war has erased their role in the early stages of hostili-
ties from the official radar.
The contemporary debates surrounding the British government’s
treatment of the Gurkhas and their battle for citizenship rights in
Britain are perhaps a further example of this, exemplifying how eli-
sions in the historical narrative of the war influence how the social
‘value’, ‘impact’ and contribution of minority communities in relation
to a common shared British history are perceived.45 Far from being
excluded from this history, South Asians have an investment through
their presence and important contribution to Britain’s war effort as
soldiers, pilots, as part of civil defence, doctors, nurses and ambulance
drivers. In this respect, this archival material offers a direct challenge
to the manner in which the Second World War continues to be memo-
rialized today.
In the context of Britain’s own historical self-perception, this mer-
its further scrutiny, in particular in relationship to the narratives of
Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and D-Day. Indeed, the role
of Indian merchant mariners in the latter has been entirely forgotten.
According to the timeline of the war published in the magazine Indian
Information, 1,183 sailors took part in these operations.46 Many more
272 Florian Stadtler
had helped to keep supply lines open, for example by sailing on Arctic
convoys. Their role came to wider public attention when British pris-
oners of war were freed from the prison ship Altmark and returned to
Britain.47
Another little-known aspect of South Asian participation in the
war, which came to much wider public prominence thanks to the
efforts of Mahinder Singh Pujji, is that of 18 Indian pilots who were
selected to fly with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in September 1940.
Trained at RAF Cranwell, these pilots would fly either bombers over
Germany or sorties in fighter planes over the English Channel and
Northern France. Due to a severe shortage, the RAF had advertised
for pilots in Indian newspapers. Mahinder Singh Pujji applied and
was one of 24 chosen to go on an intensive training course in Britain.
In the end 18 successfully passed the test and six – Pujji among them –
became fighter pilots, while the remainder flew bombers. Yet, hardly
any history of the RAF mentions them. Furthermore, they were omit-
ted during the inauguration of the Bomber Command Memorial in
June 2012, while the stories of Czech, Polish, Caribbean and French
pilots are much more widely publicized. In a personal interview in
2009, Mr Pujji suggests that initially he was unconcerned that there
was no official recognition of the Indian pilots. For him, having
won the Distinguished Flying Cross for his services was the official
recognition for his work. However, when the commemorations for
the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War occurred,
Mr Pujji wrote a letter to the MOD challenging them as to why, as
a veteran RAF pilot of the UK-based 43rd and 258th Squadrons, he
had not been invited to the commemorations for Victory in Europe
Day, although he had received an invite to the Victory in Japan Day
celebrations, and why the other Indian pilots flying with the RAF at
the time had not been mentioned.48
Pioneering historian of Asian Britain, Rozina Visram first high-
lighted his story in her schoolbook and he subsequently gave talks to
children. This has generated more coverage of his story in recent years.
A staunch campaigner, he also made interventions challenging the
appropriation of symbols like the Spitfire by right-wing organizations
such as the British National Party.49 Christopher Somerville’s extensive
interview with Pujji is available at the Imperial War Museum Sound
Archive, extracts of which are published in his book Our War: How
the British Commonwealth Fought the Second World War (1998).
Pujji published his biography For King and Another Country in 2010,
just before his death. Yet, recognition at the public level of the contri-
butions of South Asian airmen remains sparse.
 ‘Home’ front 273
The aforementioned case studies highlight the range and breadth of
individual stories that have remained under the radar, despite being
well documented by archival evidence. They point to the fraught
process of the writing of colonial and military history. It highlights
particularly how the historical presence and contribution of citizens
from different ethnic backgrounds still do not feature productively in
national stories. This lack of representation, despite archival docu-
mentation, is perhaps due to the fact that these material documents
have not been accorded the retrospective significance they merit. It
is only over the past 20 years that these materials relating to the Sec-
ond World War have been revisited more systematically by archivists,
curators and historians, and are brought to wider public attention.
However, the process of reinserting these narratives into contempo-
rary discussion about the Second World War is fraught and difficult as
it counters received national discourses.
The historian Michael-Rolph Trouillot offers some useful obser-
vations here. In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of
History (1995) he proposes that ‘history as social process, involves
people in three distinct capacities: 1) as agents, or occupants of struc-
tural positions; 2) as actors in constant interface with a context; and
3) as subjects, that is, as voices aware of their vocality’.50 This segmen-
tation of agents, actors and subjects has ramifications of how com-
memoration takes place in the present but also points towards the
slippages that lead to absence and silence within historical discourses.
This absence is premised on hegemonic discourses in the present day
which privilege certain interpretative models and which reflect and
confirm a national consciousness in relation to the Second World War,
particularly the notion that Britain ‘stood alone’. This in turn has an
effect on how historical events are memorialized in the present and
how other historical narratives are obscured, however much material
may be found in the archives. For Trouillot, ‘silences enter the process
of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact
creation (the making of sources); the moment of assembly (the making
of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives);
and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in
the final instance).’51
As Britain has become increasingly perceptive and aware of its own
cultural diversity, the manner in which it remembers the Second World
War, too, requires reframing. There is a need to return to the archive to
continue the process of diversifying the contemporary historical nar-
rative of the Second World War to account productively for the efforts
of the citizens of Empire in the fight against fascism. A sociocultural
274 Florian Stadtler
historical approach is therefore vitally important to reveal the inter-
connection between South Asian contributions in Britain to the Second
World War as part of a wider national story. Such re-evaluation can
occur only by an analysis that triangulates methodological approaches
that engage in equal measure with archival evidence and military, social
and imperial histories. In this way, such historiography might produc-
tively account for South Asian participation and contribution while
also underlining the racism and prevailing inequality they experienced.
There is undoubtedly a strong case to be made that this pivotal histori-
cal event, so often described as ‘Britain’s Finest Hour’, is part of a com-
mon shared history that unearths and reflects the complex relationship
between South Asians and Britons across the decades.
Acknowledgements: This chapter stems from the AHRC-funded
research projects, ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and
Abroad, 1870–1950’ (Grant No. AH/E009859/1) and ‘Beyond the
Frame: Indian British Connections’ (Grant No. AH/J003247/1), led
by The Open University. I would like to acknowledge Rozina Visram
who generously shared expertise and contacts and opened up her pri-
vate archive and collection to me, as well as Susheila Nasta, who led
both projects, for her expert guidance and support. Many thanks also
to Ghee Bowman for sharing with me his knowledge of Force K6.

Notes
1 Record of the Indian Army in Europe During the First World War. Photog-
rapher: H. D. Girdwood, Photo 24, The British Library, St Pancras, UK.
<www.bl.uk/manuscripts/BriefDisplay.aspx> [accessed 8 July 2014].
2 ‘The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire’, British Broadcasting
Corporation, 2014.
3 ‘Forgotten Volunteers’, Timewatch, British Broadcasting Corporation,
1998.
4 Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (London: Bloomsbury, 2004).
5 ‘Indian Memorial Chattri at Brighton’, India Office Records, L/
MIL/7/19548, British Library, St Pancras, UK.
6 George Orwell, Talking to India: A Selection of English Language Broad-
casts to India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1943).
7 Orwell, Talking to India.
8 ‘Criticism of BBC Broadcasts’, India Office Records, L/I/1/952, British
Library, St Pancras, UK. ‘Files on Broadcasting and Propaganda,’ India
Office Records, British Library, St Pancras, UK.
9 George Orwell, All Propaganda Is Lies, 1941–1942, Complete Works
Series (London: Secker and Warburg, 2001), p. 406.
10 Orwell, Talking to India, p. 9.
11 Susheila Nasta, ‘Sealing a Friendship: George Orwell and Mulk Raj Anand
at the BBC (1941–43)’, Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing,
vol. 26, no. 4 (2011), pp. 14–18.
 ‘Home’ front 275
12 Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto,
2002), p. 330.
13 W. J. West (ed.), Orwell: The War Broadcasts (London: Duckworth and
British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985), p. 15.
14 Nasta, ‘Sealing a Friendship’, p. 14.
15 Mulk Raj Anand, ‘London As I See It’, Wasafiri: International Contempo-
rary Writing, vol. 26, no. 4 (2011), pp. 19–21.
16 West, Orwell, 194.
17 Anand, ‘London as I See It’, p. 21.
18 Anand, ‘London as I See It’, p. 21.
19 Visram, Asians in Britain, p. 331.
20 ‘Note on the Statement of the Indian National Congress in Regard to
the War,’ London, 22 September 1939, p. 38, L/PJ/12/323, India Office
Records, British Library, London, UK.
21 Extract from Colonial Information Bulletin dated 18.9.39, London, 18
September 1939, p. 42, L/PJ/12/323, India Office Records, British Library,
London, UK.
22 ‘Special Branch Report 26/4/42: Emergency Conference organized by the
India League at the Holborn Hall, Grays in Road, W.C.’, London, 26
April 1942, p. 27, L/PJ/12/454 India Office Records, British Library, Lon-
don, UK.
23 Rozina Visram, ‘Katial, Chuni Lal (1898–1978)’, in Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) <www.
oxforddnb.com.lib.exeter.ac.uk/view/article/71630> [accessed 29 July 2014].
24 Hari Dev Sharmi and Dr C. L. Katial, ‘Oral History Interview with Chuni
Lal Katial’, New Delhi, 17 June 1976, p. 25, List No. 128, Nehru Memo-
rial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India.
25 Indian Information, vol. 9, no. 84 (1941), p. 503.
26 Indian Comforts Fund, War Record of the Indian Comforts Fund, December
1939 to December 1945 (London: Indian High Commission, 1946), p. 26.
27 Indian Comforts Fund Progress Report October 1941 to March 1942.
London: India House Aldwych, 1942, p. 7, L/MIL/17/5/2372, India Office
Records, British Library, London.
28 Indian Comforts Fund Progress Report, p. 7
29 R. W. W. Hills, Mohamed Akbar Khan and Sikh Flying Officer of the RAF,
‘In It Together: How the Peoples of India Unite in the Common Cause’,
The Listener, vol. XXIV, no. 614 (1940), pp. 559–61.
30 From R. Hills Lieutenant Colonel, Commander, Indian Contingent to the
QMG in India, Delhi, India. War Diaries Force K6. 30 September 1940,
p. 84. L/WS/1/355. India Office Records, British Library, London.
31 ‘India and the War’, The Times, 29 December 1939, p. 7.
32 War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire Dur-
ing the Great War, 1914–1920 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1922), p. 777.
33 M. K. Gandhi et al., Letter to Under Secretary, India Office, Whitehall, Lon-
don, 14 August 1914, p. 1, Mss Eur F 170/8, British Library, London, UK.
34 George Dunbar, India at War: A Record and Review, 1939–40 (London:
H. M. Stationary Office, 1940), pp. 4–5, 8.
35 Lord Hailey, ‘How India Will Help’, The Listener, vol. XXII, no. 559
(1939), p. 602.
276 Florian Stadtler
36 Hills to QMG, p. 84.
37 Hills to QMG, p. 86.
38 ‘Decypher Telegram from Government of India, Defence Department, to
Secretary of State from India’, 1 November 1939, Movement of Troops:
animal transport companies for France – Force K.3, 1939–1942, p. 407,
L/WS/1/131, India Office Records, British Library, London, UK.
39 Defence Department, Government of India, The Indian Army List: Janu-
ary 1942 (New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1942), pp. 1791–882.
40 Reginald Hills, ‘Secret Memo: the Indian Contingent’, 29 August 1941,
Movement of Troops: animal transport companies for France – Force K3,
1939–1942, p. 41, L/WS/1/131, India Office Records, British Library,
London, UK.
41 See Visram, Asians in Britain.
42 Patrick Wintour, ‘Ashdown Tells How Father Stood by Indian Troops’,
The Guardian Online (8 November 2000), <www.guardian.co.uk/
uk/2000/nov/08/patrickwintour/print> [accessed 15 June 2010].
43 Reginald Hills, ‘Secret Report on Operations in France’, n.d., pp. 103–4,
L/WS/1/355, India Office Records, British Library, London, UK.
44 Alan Macpherson, ‘Report on a Visit to the R.I.A.S.C. Camp, Ashbourne
(Derby) on 2nd July 1940’, Movement of Troops: animal transport com-
panies for France – Force K.3, 1939–1942, p. 266, L/WS/1/131, India
Office Records, British Library, London, UK.
45 For an interesting discussion of the subject, see Vron Ware, Military
Migrants: Fighting for Your Country (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012).
46 Indian Information (New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcast-
ing, 1 June 1945), p. 7.
47 Susheila Nasta and Florian Stadtler, Asian Britain: A Photographic His-
tory (London: Westbourne Press, 2013), pp. 137, 147.
48 Florian Stadtler and Rozina Visram, ‘Private Interview with Mahinder
Singh Pujji’, Gravesend (18 February 2009).
49 Benedict Moore-Bridger, ‘Spitfire Is Not BNP’s to Use, Says Sikh Pilot
Who Fought the Nazis’, Evening Standard, 23 November 2009, p. 28.
50 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of
History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 23
51 Trouillot, Silencing the Past, p. 26.
Index
The Abyssinian Difficulty: The
Emperor Theodorus and the
Magdala Campaign, 1867 – 68
(Bates) 31
Afghanistan 7 – 8, 23, 31, 64 – 81,
157 – 8; British invasion of 64 – 81
Afghanistan and the Defence
of Empire: Diplomacy and
Strategy during the Great Game
(Wyatt) 31
The Afghan Way of War: Culture
and Pragmatism–A Critical
History (Johnson) 30
Agha, Sameetah 157 – 77
Air Officer Commanding (AOC) 191
Air Power and Colonial Control:
The Royal Air Force, 1919 – 39
(Omissi) 35
Air Raid Precaution (ARP) 263 – 4
Alavi, Seema 26
Ali, Haidar 27
Allied war effort 190, 215, 218
Amery, Leo 231
Amherst, William 55
The Amritsar Massacre: The
Untold Story of One Fateful Day
(Lloyd) 34
amusement 92, 96
Anderson, H.A. 166 – 73
Anglo-Afghan War 31
Anglo-American relations 212, 219,
225 – 6, 230
Anglo-American wartime relations
212, 219, 225 – 6, 230
Anglo-Indian press 9
Anglo-Indians 114, 250 – 2;
community 115
Anglo-Indian terrorism 120
The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns
and the Contest for India: The
Struggle for Control of the
South Asian Military Economy
(Cooper) 27
Anglo-Sikh alliance 79
Anglo-Sikh Wars 87, 96
Animal Transport Company
268, 270
anti-aircraft (AA) guns 187,
188, 191
anti-imperialism 10, 119 – 20, 124,
218, 226
anti-tank guns 192 – 3
Anti-Tank Regiment: 80th 194
armed troops 183, 185 – 8, 200,
205; British 109, 122, 163 – 4,
169, 200, 219 – 20, 242, 249,
270; colonial troops 11, 132,
134 – 43; Company and Crown 89;
European 85 – 6; Indian 13, 33,
183, 199, 201 – 2, 214, 216 – 18,
222, 266 – 7; South Asian 271;
territorial 216; well-motivated
206
The Armies of India (MacMunn) 23
army 86 – 95, 99; cheap 91; corporal
punishment 90; and government
officials 88; growth of 48;
historiography of 22; medical
establishment of 90; pre-Mutiny
image of 28; and political officers
32; role of colonial 35; soldiery
improvement 90; see also Bengal
army; British army; British Indian
army; Indian army; Japanese army
278 Index
The Army in British India: From
Colonial Warfare to Total War,
1857 – 1947 (Roy) 24
The Army in India and the
development of Frontier Warfare,
1849 – 1947 (Moreman) 31
Arnott, F.S. 98
Attlee, Clement 223
Auckland, Lord 72 – 7, 79
Australian Imperial Forces (AIF)
183, 184, 199, 202
Awadh in Revolt, 1857 – 58:
A Study of Popular Resistance
(Mukherjee) 28
Bandyopadhyay, Premansu
Kumar 28
Barat, Amiya 26
barqandazes, recruitment of 52, 56, 58
Barua, Pradeep 24, 30
Bates, Darrell 31
battalion 47 – 9, 56, 184, 186,
193 – 4, 196 – 7
battle-hardened troops 13, 206
battle of regiment 185
Bayly, C.A. 32, 35
Bayly, M.J. 74, 79
BBC 258 – 62, 266 – 7, 270
Beadon, Cecil 114
Beattie, Hugh 31
Beckett, Ian F.W. 22 – 44
The Beginning of the Great Game in
India, 1828 – 34 (Ingram) 30
Bencoolen: A History of the
Honourable East India
Company’s Garrison on the West
Coast of Sumatra, 1685 – 1825
(Harfield) 25
Bengal 6 – 7, 36, 45 – 59, 87, 93,
218 – 19, 248
Bengal Army 6 – 7, 46 – 50, 52, 56,
58, 112, 115; deployment of 49;
vs. EIC 58; EIC, detachment of
48; formation 52; military police
force and 50; redeployment of 57;
strength of 52
The Bengal Army and the Outbreak
of the Indian Mutiny (David) 28
The Bengal Native Infantry: Its
Organisation and Discipline,
1796 – 1852 (Barat) 26
Bengal Presidency 58
Bennett, H. Gordon 199, 200
Beresford, Marcus 77
The Best Black Troops in the World:
British Perceptions and the
Making of the Sepoy, 1746 – 1805
(Wickremesekera) 26
Bird, G. Corrie 163 – 4, 166 – 7,
171 – 2, 175
Blackburn, Kevin 204
Black Mountain 131 – 48;
North-West Frontier 131 – 48;
tribes 134
From the Black Mountain to
Waziristan (Wylly) 131 – 48
Blyth, Robert 30
Bokhari, Zulfikar Ali 260
Bond, Brian 31
Bose, Subhas Chandra 14, 260 – 1
Boyden, Peter 24
Bridge, Carl 198
Bright, John 90
Britain: colonialism 10; colonial war
107; declaration of war 261
Britain’s Army in India: From Its
Origins to the Conquest of Bengal
(Lawford) 26
Britain’s Persian Connection,
1798 – 1828: Prelude to the Great
Game in Asia (Ingram) 30
British: colonialism 157, 176;
commanders 206; Empire 4,
14, 107, 124, 213, 217, 258;
Expeditionary Force 268; imperial
expansion 157; imperial power
1, 75; intelligence 226; Official
History 189, 205; political
influence 75; war effort 267
British and Indian Armies in
the East Indies, 1685 – 1935
(Harfield) 25
British anxieties 105; Anglo-Indian
militarism 105
British Army 9, 28 – 9, 76, 99, 108,
142, 162, 201, 220, 249, 252,
263, 268
The British Conquest and Dominion
of India (Moon) 27
British East India Company’s (EIC)
45; armed bodies, structure
of 57; vs. Bengal Army 58;

Bengal Army, detachment of 48;
colonial administration and 51;
colonial bureaucracy 58; diwani
revolutionized 45; Douglas Peers’
analysis 47; expansion of 46, 51;
large standing army 51; martial
law introduced 46; military
context of 58; military hierarchy
54, 59; military reputation 53, 55;
north-west frontier 48; paramount
status 58; parts of territory 53;
political and military supremacy,
rise of 58; political dominance
of 46; provincial battalions,
establishment of 52; public
demonstration of 57; revenue
work 46; role of 56; victory in the
Second Anglo-Maratha War 50;
victory over the Marathas 52
British Emergency Commissioned
Officers (ECOs) 186
British government 69, 72, 75,
113, 121, 262, 271; control over
Punjab 70; Dost Muhammad
and71
British Indian affairs 64 – 5, 70,
80 – 1
British Indian Army 162, 258,
268 – 9; Royal Indian Army Service
Corps (RIASC) 268, 270
British Military Policy in India,
1900 – 45: Colonial Constraints
and Declining Power
(Deshpande) 33
British National Party 272
The British Raj and its Indian
Armed Forces, 1857 – 1939 (Gupta
and Deshpande) 24
Broadbent, J.R. 199, 200
Brook, Norman 227
Brooke-Popham, Robert 190
Broome, Arthur 23
Brown Warriors of the Raj:
Recruitment and the Mechanics
of Command in the Sepoy Army,
1859 – 1913 (Roy) 29
Bruce, R.I. 164, 173
brutality 106, 122; criticisms of 106
Bryant, Gerald 49
Buddle, Anne 27
Burke, Edmund 124
Index 279
Burma 12 – 13, 26, 28, 31, 35, 50,
93, 206, 213, 218, 221 – 2, 224 – 6,
228, 230 – 1, 258
Burnes, Alexander 74 – 6, 79
Butler, James 227
The Butcher of Amritsar: General
Reginald Dyer (Collett) 34
Cadell, Patrick 23
Callahan, Raymond 26, 220
Callwell, C. 132 – 3, 138, 145, 147 – 8
Campaigns on the North West
Frontier (Nevill) 32
Campbell, Colin 32, 111, 116, 118
Canning, Lord 120
cantonments 86, 91 – 3, 99; in
amusement 92; economies of 86;
Lal Bazaars 86; social life 85 – 99
Caplan, Lionel 29
Cardew, F.G. 23
Cardwell Reforms 87, 88
Carpendale, W. 186, 187
Carson, Dave 95
Christianity 116, 123
Churchill, Randolph 214
Churchill, W. 12 – 14, 212 – 31;
as historian 213 – 15; Indian
Army and 216 – 26; as memoirist
213 – 15; official history, influence
226 – 30; Second World War
218 – 26; World Crisis 216 – 18; as
writer 213 – 15
civilians, in Britain 258 – 74
civil–military relations 162 – 75, 176
Clarke, E.H.S. 173
Clive, Robert 52
Clyde, Lord 111, 120 – 1
Cobden, Richard 90
Cold War 219, 225, 231
Collett, Nigel 34
Colonel Samuel Bagshawe and the
Army of George II, 1731 – 62
(Guy) 26
Colonial armies: administration
51; authority 105, 132 – 3, 140,
144, 165; culture, intersection of
132; ethnography 133; expansion
of 6; ingenuity 253; knowledge
133; literature 160; paternalism
119, 139; self-congratulation
253; soldiers 132; survey party
280 Index
136; territory 144; tribesmen
resistance 140
colonial force 138, 143; against
Black Mountain tribes 138;
Durand Line, delimitation of 143
colonialism in Bengal: paramilitary
forces, role of 45 – 59
colonial military: archive 12, 148,
177; history 177; policy 146;
power 132 – 3, 138, 141, 145;
service 2 – 3, 11
colonial power 2, 135, 146; military
technologies, effect of 146; range
of 142
colonial South Asia, history of 6, 17
Colvin, William 70
commanding officer (CO) 87, 92,
94 – 6, 134, 191
Commitment to Empire: Prophecies
of the Great Game in Asia,
1797 – 1800 (Ingram) 30
Committee of Revenue 53, 56
Commonwealth 183, 184, 186, 188,
189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 196;
commanders 206; defeat 198; failure
of 183; force 12, 186, 199, 204;
infantry 193, 204; Japanese forces
and 184–9; military failure 198–205;
troops 198, 204, 205, 206; and
war-raised British troops 12
A Companion to the Indian Mutiny
of 1857 (Taylor) 23
Compton, Richard 99
Constantinople 65 – 6, 109; Russia’s
designs on 66
Conway, Henry Seymour 64
Cooper, Randolf G.S. 27
Cornwallis, Lord 57
Corrigan, Gordon 33
cost–benefit analysis 92, 99
Crimean War 108 – 9, 111
Crisis on the Frontier: The Third
Afghan War and the Campaign in
Waziristan, 1919 – 20 (Robson) 35
Crown troops, India 85
cultural history 13, 17
culture 64 – 81, 131 – 48; intelligence
and 64 – 81
David, Saul 28
Davies, Huw J. 64 – 81
Davis, P.K. 33 – 4
Day, Matthew 56
decolonization 15
In Defence of British India: Great
Britain in the Middle East,
1775 – 1842 (Ingram) 30
Defence Sub-Committee 249
Delane, J.T. 114 – 16, 118
Delhi 73, 95, 97 – 8, 113, 250, 253
demobilization 219
democracy 185
Dennis, Peter 35
Deshpande, Anirudh 24, 33
On the Designs of Russia (Lacy) 65
Dewey, C.J. 3, 245
Dickens, Charles 104, 114, 116
Dogra Regiment: 3rd/17th 190
Dorrington, Thomas 98
Duke of Wellington, Arthur
Wellesley 89 – 90
Durham, Lord 66 – 9, 74; trade
missions, expenditure of 66
Dutta, Vipul 239 – 54
East India Company 6 – 8, 25 – 6, 29,
70, 74, 76, 79, 81, 93, 114, 239;
military force 8
The East India Company and Army
Reform, 1783 – 98 (Callahan) 26
East India Company Army 70,
76, 81
Edge of Empire: The British Political
Officer and Tribal Administration
on the North West Frontier,
1877 – 1947 (Tripodi) 31 – 2
Egerton, C.C. 164, 173
Ellinwood, De Witt 33
Ellis, Henry 74
Elphinstone, Mountstuart 75 – 6,
80 – 1
Empire and Information:
Intelligence-gathering and
Social Communication in India,
1780 – 1870 (Bayly) 32
The Empire of the Raj: India,
Eastern Africa and the Middle
East, 1858 – 1947 (Blyth) 30
Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural
Alliance, Imperial Expansion,
and Warfare in the Early Modern
World (Lee) 25

Ends and Means: The British
Mesopotamia Campaign and
Commission (Davis) 33 – 4
European Powers 67, 74, 76
Ewans, Martin 31
Family Embassy 66
Fay, Peter 35 – 6
fanaticism 133, 145, 160–1, 167, 176
Fane, Henry 70, 73, 76
fascism185, 262 – 3, 267, 273
Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA) 157
Fidelity and Honour: The Indian
Army from the Seventeenth
to the Twenty-First Century
(Menezes) 24
Field Regiment: 15th 196; 137th
194; 155th 194
Finsbury Health Centre 264
The First Afghan War, 1838 – 42
(Norris) 31
First Anglo-Afghan War 64, 80, 157;
conventional analysis of 80
First Burma War 26, 28
First Round Table Conference
(1931) 239, 249
First World War 13, 15 – 16, 214,
216, 240 – 2, 244, 247, 253,
258 – 9, 267 – 8, 270 – 1
Fitchett, W.H. 22
Ford, Douglas 226
Forgotten Armies: The Fall of
British Asia, 1941 – 45 (Bayly and
Harper) 35
The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed
Struggle for Independence,
1942 – 45 (Fay) 35 – 6
Forster, Richard 29
Franco-Prussian War 115
Frontier Force Rifles (FFR) 191
Frontier Political Officer 159
Galbraith, W. 137
Gandhi, M.K. 267
Garrett, K.A. 193
Garrison, Kohima 221
The Garrison State: The Military,
Government and Society in
Colonial Punjab, 1849 – 1947 (Tan
Tai Yong) 26
Index 281
Gee, Herbert W. 159 – 63, 165 – 70,
174 – 5
General Headquarters (GHQ)
187, 188
General Officer Commanding
(GOC) 184, 194, 195, 196, 205
Gentlemen of the Raj: The Indian
Officer Corps, 1817 – 1949
(Barua) 30
Germany 33, 216, 265, 272
Ghosh, K. K. 36
Gilchrist, Andrew 190, 203, 206
Gilliard, D.R. 30
Goodlad, Richard 55
Government of India (GOI) 8, 10,
14, 132, 135 – 7, 139, 157 – 8,
162 – 3, 165 – 6, 168 – 9, 171 – 3,
175 – 6, 199, 249 – 50, 267, 270
Government of India Act (1935)
242, 267
Government of Punjab 132, 136 – 7,
141, 171; expedition of 1852 135;
expedition of 1860 141; Hazara
expedition of 1888 136 – 7
Governor General 107, 114, 116 – 17
Grant, A.J. 167
The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours,
Conspiracies and the Making of
the Indian Uprising (Wagner) 29
Great Power rivalry 64
Great Powers of Europe 64
The Great Rebellion of 1857:
Exploring Transgressions,
Contexts and Diversities (Pati) 29
The Great Uprising in India,
1857 – 58: Untold Stories, Indian
and British (Llewellyn-Jones) 29
Gupta, Partha Sarathi 24
Gurkha Regiment (GR): 2nd/2nd
186; 2nd/1st 186; 2nd/9th 186
Gurkhas 2
Guy, Alan J. 24, 26
Hack, Karl 204
Hanifi, Shah Mahmoud 157
Harfield, Alan 25
Harper, Tim 35
Hastings, Warren 85
Havelock, Henry 110
Hazara 11, 71, 133, 135 – 6,
138, 157
282 Index
Hazara expedition of 1888 136 – 7
Headlam, Cuthbert 226
Heath, Lewis (Piggy) 184, 199
Heathcote, Tony 23
Herbert, Christopher 105, 119
Hevia, James 32
Hibbert, Christopher 28
The History of the Bengal European
Regiment now the Madras
Fusiliers, and How It Helped to
Win India (Innes) 23
A History of the Bombay Army
(Cadell) 23
History of the Madras Army
(Wilson) 23
History of the Rise and Progress of
the Bengal Army (Broome) 23
History of the Sepoy War (Kaye) 23
Hogben, W. Murray 163
Holmes, Richard 23
Hopkins, Benjamin 157
Holt, Timothy 32
Howe, Stephen 4
Hyderabad Regiment: 4th/19th 185
ideal soldier, recruits 88 – 92, 99;
practical purposes 96
Illustrated London News 94
imperial authority 165
Imperial Cadet Corps (ICC) 241
Imperial Frontier: Tribe and State in
Waziristan (Hugh Beattie) 31
Imperial General Staff 223
imperialism 5, 16, 107, 111, 117,
120, 124, 173, 217
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) 183,
188, 198, 206
imperial military: history of 5, 9, 11;
power of 132, 140, 144 – 5
The Imperial Security State:
British Colonial Knowledge
and Empire-Building in Asia
(Hevia) 32
‘An Incident during the Sikh Wars’ 4
India 6, 8 – 9, 13, 50, 58, 119 – 20,
157 – 77, 203, 205, 212, 214,
216, 250
India and World War I (Ellinwood
and Pradhan) 33
Indian Army 22 – 36, 111, 162,
183 – 206, 212 – 31, 239 – 40,
243 – 4, 247 – 8, 250 – 2, 254, 258,
266, 268 – 9, 271; Churchill’s
world crisis 216 – 18; in defeat
183 – 206; East India Company
25 – 6, 29; historiography of 6;
history of 22 – 44; Indianization of
the 240; National Army Museum
24, 27; organizational culture
of 13; Second World War 35,
212 – 31; Seven Years’ War 25
The Indian Army, 1939 – 47:
Experience and Development
(Jeffreys and Rose) 35
The Indian Army and the Making of
the Punjab (Mazumder) 29
Indian Army defeat 183 – 211;
commonwealth, military failure
197 – 205; Japanese forces 184 – 9;
operations, conduct of 190 – 7
The Indian Army in Two World
Wars (Roy) 34 – 5
Indian Army Regulations (1932) 252
The Indian Army: The Garrison of
British Imperial India, 1822 – 1922
(Heathcote) 23
Indian Brigade: 15th 193; 28th 194;
45th 196, 197; 161st 221
Indian Civil Service (ICS) 245
Indian Comforts Fund 265 – 6, 269;
charitable organization and 269
Indian Corps: 3rd 184, 192, 200
Indian Emergency Commissioned
Officers (ECOs) 246
Indian Field Ambulance Corps 267;
establishment of 267
Indian independence movement 260,
263, 264
Indian Infantry Brigade 184, 186,
188, 190, 192, 194, 195, 212; 6th
192, 194; 8th 190; 12th 184; 15th
194; 28th 186, 194
Indian Infantry Division 187;
11th 184
Indianization 14, 34; debate 252;
dynamics of 243; primary goals of
242; understanding of 252
Indian Military Academy (IMA) 14,
16, 239 – 41, 242 – 4, 247, 239 – 54;
analysis of 254; constitution
of 249; emergence of 239 – 54;
establishment of 245, 247, 253

Indian Military College Committee
239 – 40
Indian military institutions 239 – 54
Indian military labour market 2
‘Indian ‘Mutiny’ 104, 112, 116,
124; British writings and 105; and
domestic society 123; Russell’s
writings 106, 109, 117, 123
Indian National Army (INA)
231, 246
The Indian National Army: The
Second Front of the Indian
Freedom Movement (Ghosh) 36
Indian population 51
Indian Rebellion (1857–8) 109 – 10,
118 – 19
Indian Red Cross 265
Indian soldiers 258 – 74
Indian stereotypes 95
Indian Voices of the Great War:
Soldiers’ Letters, 1914 – 18
(Omissi) 33
India’s martial races, representations
of 3
Infantry Brigade, 28th 184
infiltration and outflanking 200
Ingram, Edward 30
Innes, P.R. 23
intelligence 7 – 8, 32, 64 – 81, 98, 105,
113 – 14, 118, 123, 140, 189, 204,
226 – 7; acquisition of 78; analysis
of 78; mongrelization of 78, 81
Intelligence and Imperial Defence:
British Intelligence and the
Defence of the Indian Empire,
1904 – 24 (Richard Popplewell) 32
Internal Security Troops 249
International Red Cross 265
intra-force mudslinging 206
The Invasion of Nepal: John
Company at War (Pemble) 31
Islam and the Army of Colonial
India: Sepoy Religion in the
Service of Empire (Green) 30
Italians of the East 198
izzat 2 – 3
Jack, The Indian Army on the
Western Front (Morton) 33
Japan 189, 230, 272
Japanese Army 183, 189
Index 283
Japanese forces 184 – 9; invasion
force 189; troops 198
Japanese Guards Regiment 196,
197; 4th 196; 5th 196, 197
Japanese Infantry Brigade: 9th 193
Japanese Infantry Regiment:
42nd 193
Jat Regiment: 2nd/9th 194; 4th/9th
196, 197
jawans 186, 203
Jeffreys, Alan 35, 183
Johnson, Rob 30
The Jungle, the Japanese and the
British Commonwealth Armies
at War, 1941 – 1945: Fighting
Methods, Doctrine and Training
for Jungle Warfare (Moreman) 35
jungle terrain 187
Jungle Warfare Training Team 205
Kabul 67, 69 – 73, 77, 79 – 80, 159
Kai-Shek, Chiang, 222
Kanpur 28, 48 – 9, 105, 111,
114, 122
Katial, Chuni Lal 264
Kaul, Vivien Ashima 24
Kaye, J.W. 23, 111, 113
Kelly, Denis 224
Khan, Dost Muhammad 70 – 3,
76 – 7, 79 – 81; authority in
Bamian 71
Khan, Ghulam Muhammad 165 – 7,
169, 172, 174 – 5
Khan, Mohamed Akbar 266
Khan, Ranu 55
Khan, Sadda 164 – 5, 168 – 75;
recognition of 165; testimony 166
For King and Another Country
(Pujji) 272
Kipling, Rudyard 107
Kirby, Woodburn 228 – 30
Kitchener, Lord 241
Knightley, Phillip 109
Kumbh Mela 98
Lacy, Evans George de 65
Lawford, James 26
Lee, Wayne 25
Lees, James 45 – 59
Lieutenant 184, 188, 189, 191,
196, 197
284 Index
light machine-guns (LMGs)
188, 193
The Light That Failed (Kipling) 107
Lincoln, Abraham 118
line of communications (LoCs)
191, 198
The Listener (Hailey) 267
Llewellyn-Jones, Rosie 29
Lloyd, Nick 34
London’s Gordon Square 259
Lord Roberts (1954) (James) 32
Lucknow 110 – 11, 116, 118, 122
Lyall, James 136
McDowall, D.H. 56
MacGregor, Charles 32 – 3
machine-gun (MG) battalion
186, 201
Mackeson, F. 134
McLeod, R. 197
MacMunn, George Fletcher 23
Macnaghten, William Hay 72, 74
McNeill, John 68, 72, 74
McQueen, J.W. 138
Mahsuds 139, 141, 143 – 4, 167
Maizar 11 – 12, 157 – 77; aftermath
of 164; attack 162, 164, 166, 168,
170 – 1, 173, 175 – 6
Maizar military tribunal 157 – 77;
civil–military relations 162 – 75;
establishment of 162 – 75;
treachery incident 158 – 62
The Making of Arthur Wellesley
(Anthony Bennell) 27
Malacca 183, 184, 196
Malaya 12, 183 – 206, 222, 229
Malcolm, J. 46, 75 – 6, 119, 124
Maliks 12, 140, 159, 162, 164 – 75
Malleson, George 23
Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or
Accidental Hero? (Mukherjee) 29
Maratha Confederacy (1805) 7,
16, 58
Marathas, Marauders and State
Formation in Eighteenth Century
India (Gordon) 27
Maratha Wars 25
The March to Kandahar: Roberts in
Afghanistan (2008) (Atwood) 32
Marlborough: His Life and Times
(Winston Churchill) 215
Between Mars and Mammon:
Colonial Armies and the Garrison
State in Early Nineteenth Century
India (Peers) 26
martial race discourse 2
The Martial Races of India
(Lovat) 23
Martial Races: The Military, Race
and Masculinity in British
Imperial Culture, 1857 – 1914
(Streets) 29
Masson, Charles 72
A Matter of Honour: An Account of
the Indian Army, Its Officers and
Men (Mason) 24
Menezes, S.L. 24
Menon, V.K. Krishna 261 – 4
Men Without Hats: Dialogue,
Discipline and Discontent in
the Madras Army, 1806 – 07
(Hoover) 27
military: expeditions 142, 162 – 3,
166; institutions 245; murders 90;
power 1, 51; resources, paucity of
54; revolution 25; traditions of 3;
tribunal 12, 157 – 77
A Military History of India and
South East Asia: From the East
India Company to the Nuclear
Era (Daniel Marston and Chandra
Sundaram) 24
The Military in British India: The
Development of British Land
Forces in South Asia, 1600 – 1947
(Heathcote) 23
Military Manpower, Armies and
Warfare in South Asia (Roy) 24 – 5
The Military Papers of Lieutenant
General Frederick Stanley Maude,
1914 – 17 (Syk) 34
milking 12, 185, 187, 203
Mills, H.W. 158, 160
Ministry of Defence (MOD) 270
minority communities 271;
contribution of 271
mobilization 201, 216
Moon, Penderel 27
Moreman, T.R. 31, 183
Morris, Mowbray 113
motor transport (MT) 186, 187
Mountain Regiment: 22nd 194

Muharram 98
Munro, Thomas 30, 124
Murray-Lyon, D. 193 – 4
Mutiny, 1857 10, 23, 28, 110, 113
Mutiny on the Margins: New
Perspectives on the Indian
Uprising of 1857 29
The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in
1857 (Palmer) 28
My God Maiwand! Operations of
the South Afghanistan Field Force,
1878 – 80 (Maxwell) 31
Nalwa, Hari Singh 70 – 1
Napier, William 23
Napoleonic War 65 – 6, 78
Narain, N. 35
Narrative of a Soldier in the 7th
Regiment 94
Nasta, Susheila 261 – 2, 274
National Archives of India
(NAI) 266
National Defence Academy
(NDA) 246
National Farmers Union 223
National Gallery of Scotland 27
nationalism 15; vs. imperialism
14 – 16
nationalization 240; dynamics
of 243; primary goals of 242;
processes of 240
National Savings Committee 223
Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy:
The Ethnohistory of the
Military Labour Market of
Hindustan,1450 – 1850 (Kolff) 25
Nazism 15, 263, 266; Britain against
15 – 16; imperialism 259
Nevill, H.L. 32, 143, 161 – 2
The New Imperial Histories Reader
(Howe) 4
News International Record Office 118
non-commissioned officers (NCOs)
12, 54, 186, 202
Norris, J.A. 31
North-West Frontier 10 – 11, 31 – 2,
48, 70, 73, 79 – 80, 131 – 48,
157 – 77, 187, 202; British India,
of 157 – 77; colonial system in
164; imperial authority challenged
by 162
Index 285
Omissi, David 5, 35
Ondaatje, Michael 258
operational practice 132; colonial
culture 132
order of battle (ORBAT) 186
orientalism 105, 122 – 3, 160
oriental phraseology 135
Origins of Nationality in South
Asia: Patriotism and Ethical
Government in the Making of
Modern India (Bayly) 26
Orwell, G. 259, 260 – 2
Our War: How the British
Commonwealth Fought the
Second World War (Pujji) 272
The Oxford Companion to Modern
Warfare in India (Roy) 23
The Pagoda War: Lord Dufferin and
the Fall of the Kingdom of Ava,
1885 – 86 (Stewart) 31
Palmer, Frederick 107
Palmerston 65, 68 – 9, 80
Paradise Lost (Milton) 94
Parkins, John 191
Pati, Biswamoy 29
Pearl Harbour 198
The Peasant Armed: The Indian
Revolt of 1857 (Stokes) 28
Peers, Douglas M. 25, 50, 76,
104 – 25
Pemble, John 31
Perak River 195
perception 87
Percival, A.E. 188, 195, 198 – 9, 229
Peshawar 70 – 1, 73, 79 – 81,
138, 157
Phoenix from the Ashes: the Indian
Army in the Burma Campaign
(Marston) 35
Piddington, Henry 93
Pitre, K.G. 27
Plumb, John Harold 215
The Politics of a Popular Uprising:
Bundelkhand, 1857 (Roy) 28
Pollock, F.R. 135
Pollock, J.A.H. 173
Pradhan, S.D. 33
Preston, Adrian 30
Prince of Wales 198
286 Index
prisoner of war (POW) 265
Public Service Commission 250
Pujji, Mahinder Singh 272
Pukhtun 157 – 77
Punjab 26, 29, 33, 69 – 70, 131 – 2,
157, 159, 171, 173, 259
Punjab Regiment: 2nd/16th 192,
194; 3rd/16th 192, 195; 1st/8th
192, 194; 1st/14th 185, 192, 193;
8th 194; 5th/14th 192
Quebec Conference, September
1944 226
racism 2 – 3, 8, 12, 29, 105, 108,
114 – 15, 118 – 21, 123, 148, 199,
204, 223, 240, 246, 274
The Raj, The Indian Mutiny and the
Kingdom of Oudh (Pemble) 28
Rajputana Rifles 197
Ram, Honda 166 – 9, 174, 176
Rand, Gavin 1 – 21, 131 – 48
Rawlinson in India (Jacobsen) 34
regimental clergymen 93
regimental saving banks 87,
92, 95
regimental schools 90
The Regiments and Corps of the
HIEC and Indian Army Volunteer
Forces (Kempton) 30
regulated entertainments 92 – 6
Rethinking 1857 (Bhattacharya) 29
retreat complex 200
The Road to Kabul: The Second
Afghan War, 1878 – 81
(Robson) 31
The Road to Waterloo: The British
Army and the Struggle against
Revolutionary and Napoleonic
France, 1793 – 1815 (Guy) 28
Roberts in India: The Military
Papers of Field Marshal Lord
Roberts, 1876 – 93 (Robson) 32
Robinson Crusoe and Narrative of a
Soldier in the 7th Regiment 94
Robson, Brian 32, 35
The Romance of the Indian
Frontiers (MacMunn) 23
Roosevelt, F. 218 – 19, 225 – 6
Rose, Patrick 35
Rosen, Stephen Peter 24
Roy, Kaushik 1 – 21, 24, 36,
183 – 206
Royal Air Force (RAF) 190, 191,
258, 272
Royal Garhwal Rifles (RGR)
190, 196
Royal Indian Army Service Corps
(RIASC) 266
Russell, W.H. 9 – 10, 104 – 25; Indian
Mutiny, making of 104 – 25
Russia 7, 64 – 7, 69, 72, 74, 80 – 1,
262; Anglo-Russian commercial
rivalry 68; British India, threat to
64 – 5; designs on Constantinople
66; expansionism 80; Great Power
rivalry with Britain 64; Hitler’s
invasion of 262; increase in threat
79; influence in Afghanistan
and Central Asia 74; military
aggression 65; Russian Mission
68; trade, annual income from 67;
trade and commerce 67; trading
interests 67
Sahib (Holmes) 23
Said, Edward 3
St. Paul’s Cathedral 108
Scott, Walter 94
Second Afghan War 31 – 3
The Second Anglo-Maratha War,
1802 – 05 (Pitre) 27
Second Maratha War 27
Second World War 12 – 15, 35, 183,
212 – 31, 240 – 2, 246, 252 – 3,
258 – 9, 263, 266, 269 – 74
Securing the Indian Frontier in
Central Asia: Confrontation
and Negotiation, 1865 – 95
(Ewans) 31
sepoy 8, 28 – 9, 33, 47, 49, 56, 88,
104, 212 – 14, 216, 225; and
sebundies 45 – 59
The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian
Army, 1860 – 1940 (Omissi) 29
sepoy regiments, mutiny of 104
The Sepoys and the Company:
Tradition and Transition in
Northern India, 1770 – 1830
(Alavi) 26

Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian
Corps on the Western Front,
1914 – 15 (Corrigan) 33
Shah, Nadir 98
Shah, Syed Ahmed 213
Sherer, J.R. 122
Shore, John 51
Sikh–Afghan conflict 74 – 5
Sikh Regiment: 1st 159; 5th
Battalion of 186; 5th/11th 185,
191, 193, 195
Sikhs 2, 7, 29, 70 – 3, 75, 79 – 81, 85,
159, 180, 213
Silencing the Past: Power and
the Production of History
(Trouillot) 273
Singapore Mutiny of 1915 34
Singh, Harbakhsh 198
Singh, M.P. 240
Singh, Mohan 185
Singh, Ranjit 7, 69 – 70, 73, 75,
79 – 80
Sir Hugh Rose and the Central India
Campaign, 1858 (Robson) 32
Sketch of the Services of the Bengal
Native Army: To the Year 1895
(Cardew) 23
Small Wars (Callwell) 132,
147 – 8
Societies and Military Power: India
and Its Armies (Rosen) 24
soldiers 85 – 99; amusement 96;
betterment of 92; calibre of 89;
degraded class of 88; diet of 90;
entertainments for 86, 94; for
holding 88; lack of refinement 89;
mental capacities 90; moral and
social 88, 97; needs 86; pastimes
87; recruits 88 – 92; reforms
of the 1820s 92 – 6; regulated
entertainments 92 – 6; sexual
activities and drinking 94; into
soldierly 92; spirituous liquors 93;
unofficial pursuits 96 – 8
Soldiers of the Raj: The Indian
Army, 1600 – 1947 (Guy and
Boyden) 24
South Asia: colonialism, history
of 5; colonial rule, expansion
of 4; culture and conflict of 16;
Index 287
mentalities of 3; WW II, impact
of 15
South Asian society 6
Spectre of Violence: The 1857
Kanpur Massacres (Mukherjee) 28
Stadtler, Florian 258 – 74
Stanley, Peter 29
The State at War in South Asia
(Barua) 24
The Story of the Guides
(Younghusband) 23
strategic culture 7, 8, 64 – 81
Strategies of British India: Britain,
Iran and Afghanistan, 1798 – 1850
(Yapp) 30
The Struggle for Asia, 1828 – 1914
(Gilliard) 30
Sultan, Tipu 27, 112
Takumo, Nishimura 196
Talking to India (Orwell) 259
Tamura, Hiroshi 202
Taylor, P.J.O. 23
Temple, Richard 131, 133, 140 – 1
theater: private theatricals 90
Thomas, H.P. 191, 202, 204, 205
Thomas, Nicholas 132
The Tiger and the Thistle: Tipu
Sultan and the Scots in India,
1760 – 1800 (Buddle) 27
The Times (1785) 9 – 10, 65, 104,
106 – 9, 112 – 15, 117 – 19, 122 – 3,
222, 266, 271
Tochi Field Force 163, 167
Tommy Guns 186, 187
Tomoyuki, Yamashita 189
Townshend, Charles 34
Treaty of Versailles, 1919 215
Trevelyan, Charles 99
tribal culture 135; peculiarities
of 141; specific notions of 147;
specific understandings of 145;
weaponizing of 140, 145
tribal populations 131
tribal territory 11, 132, 135 – 7,
139 – 42, 145 – 6; colonial
ingression into 139; penetration
into colonial archive 141
tribesmen 11 – 12, 134 – 41, 143,
159 – 61, 164 – 7; colonial power,
288 Index
challenge performances of 135;
colonial troops and 138; killed
134; military superiority over 141;
opposing colonial advance 139
Tripodi, Christian 31 – 2
Troubled Days of Peace:
Mountbatten and South East Asia
Command, 1945 – 46 (Dennis) 35
Trouillot, Michael-Rolph 273
Trousdale, William 33
Truman, Harry S. 228
Tulsi Leaves and the Ganges Water
(Bandyopadhyay) 28
Between Two Worlds: A Rajput
Officer in the Indian Army,
1905 – 21, Based on the Diary
of Amar Singh of Jaipur
(Ellinwood) 33
University of Edinburgh 29
unofficial pursuits 96 – 8
uprising, 1897 11, 158
US Civil War 115
Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers
(VCOs) 185, 187
Victorian Military Campaigns
(Bond) 31
Wade, Claude Martine 73, 75 – 6
Wagner, Kim 29
Wald, Erica 8 – 9, 85 – 99
war 239 – 54
War, Culture and Society in Early
Modern Asia, 1740 – 1849
(Roy) 36
War and Society in Colonial India,
1807 – 1945 (Roy) 24
Warfare and Empires: Contact
and Conflict between European
and Non-European Military and
Maritime Forces and Cultures
(Peers) 25
War in Afghanistan, 1879 – 80: The
Personal; Diary of Major General
Sir Charles Metcalfe MacGregor
(Trousdale) 33
The War in Malaya (Kirby) 229
War of No Pity: The Indian
Mutiny and Victorian Trauma
(Hibbert) 28
Warren, Alan 35, 183
Warrior Gentleman: Gurkhas in
Western Imagination (Caplan) 29
Wavell, A.P. 204
Waverly (Scott) 94
Waziristan 11 – 12, 31, 131 – 48, 158,
163 – 4
Waziristan frontier 139, 141, 144;
colonial troops return 141
Waziristan: The Faqir of Ipi and the
Indian Army: The North West
Frontier Revolt (Warren) 35
Weller, Jac 27
Wellesley, A. 9, 27 – 8, 90 – 1
Wellesley school 90
Wellington in India (Weller) 27
When God Made Hell: The British
Invasion of Mesopotamia and
the Creation of Iraq, 1914 – 21
(Townshend) 34
White, George 158
White Mutiny: British Military
Culture in India, 1825 – 75
(Stanley) 29
Wickremesekera, Channa 26
William, Fort 50 – 1, 53 – 7;
centralization of force 53;
expanding Bengal Army 57;
military dispositions 59
Williams, John 22
Wilson, Catherine 13, 212 – 31
Wood, Charles 115
Wilson, William 23
Wyatt, Christopher 31
Wylly, H.C. 131 – 48
Yapp, Malcolm 30
Younghusband, George 23
Younghusband, R.E. 173