Indigenous mercenaries in the service of European imperialists: The case of the sepoys in the early British Indian Army, 1750-1800

War in History

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 2-28

  Bryant, G J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BOLTON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 53849091809     PISSN: 09683445     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/096834450000700102     Document Type: Review

References (75)

1. G.J. Bryant, 'The Military Imperative in Early British Expansion in India, 1750-1785', Indo-Britisk Review, XXI (1996), pp. 18-35
2. A.N. Gilbert, 'Recruitment and Reform in the East India Company Army, 1760-1800', Journal of British Studies XV (1975); Madras Secret Consultations (hereafter Mad. Sec. Cons.), 25 Sept. 1767, British library (Oriental and India Office Collections) (hereafter BL (OIOC)), Range 251, vol. 59, p. 917
3. Col. Mark Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India... (3 vols, London, 1817) II, p. 25
4. GJ. Bryant, 'The Cavalry Problem in the Early British Indian Army, 1750-1785', War in History II (1995), pp. 1-21
5. Robert Clive, 'Miscellaneous Papers' (1769-70), BL (OIOC), MSS Eur. F128/4, p. 8
6. Edward Ives, A Voyage from England to India in the year 1754... etc (London, 1773), p. 23
7. Clive, 'Miscellaneous Papers', 1769-70, p. 20
8. Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan (3 vols, London, 1770-2) III, p. vii
9. Gen. Sir John Malcolm, The Political History of India from 1784 to 1823 (2 vols, London, 1826): 'their virtues are more of a passive than an active nature... Though the climate disposes [the sepoy] to inertness... he may be nattered and encouraged to make the most extraordinary exertions...: II, pp. 236-7
10. R.O. Cambridge, An Account of the War in India between the English and French, on the Coast of Coromandel from the year 1750 to the year 1760 (London, 1761), p. viii
11. Col. Pennington (Bengal Army 1783-1823) in A. Barat, The Bengal Native Infantry: Its Organisation and Discipline, 1796-1852 (Calcutta, 1962), pp. 174-5
12. review of Capt. Williams, The Bengal Native Infantry (London, 1817) in Quarterly Review, XVIII (1818), pp. 397-8
13. Malcolm, Political History, pp. 223, 226-7, 237
14. Clive, 'Miscellaneous Papers', p. 7
15. Clive to Select Committee of the Court of Directors, 28 Aug. 1767, Nat. Lib. of Wales, Glive MS 59, pp. 1-14
16. Mad. Sec. Cons., 21 July 1766, BL (OIOC), Range 251, vol. 56, p. 491, agreed: 'We have no reason hitherto to doubt of the fidelity of our Sepoys, in General they are well attached to Our Service and to the Party that Pays them'
17. D.H.A. Kolff, Navkar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 57-8, 119
18. S. Gordon, Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in 18th Century India (Delhi, 1994), pp. 203-4, 207
19. Abbé Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, 3rd edn (Oxford 1906, originally written 1806), pp. 3-6
20. Ninth Report of the Committee of Secrecy, on the Nature, State and Condition of the East India Company (1773), 170
21. Barat, Bengal Infantry, pp. 79, 182 and 292-3
22. Lt.-Col. F.B. Norman, 'European Foreign Soldiers in the British Service in India', Proceedings of the United Services Institute of India 5 (1876), pp. 113-14
23. Thomas Kerridge and Thomas Mills, Company Factors, 1628, in W. Foster, ed., The English Factories in India, 1624-1629 (Oxford, 1909), p. 135
24. H.D. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras 1640-1800 (3 vols, Madras, 1913) I, pp. 170-4, 216, 283, 365
25. Madras to Directors, 12 Jan. 1665, in W. Foster, ed., The English Factories in India, 1655-1666 (Oxford, 1921), p. 40
26. R. Orme, A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan... etc, 4th edn (2 vols, London, 1803) I, p. 80. Mad. Sec. Cons., 2 Jan. 1756, BL (OIOC), Range C, vol. 50
27. Col. S. Rivett-Carnac, The Presidential Armies of India (London, 1890), pp. 45, 56, 85, 105 and 115
28. Orme, History I, pp. 80-1, 99
29. Love, Vestiges II, pp. 170-4
30. H.H. Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment in the Old Madras Army (Calcutta, 1922), p. 7
31. Rivett-Carnac, Armies, pp. 77, 84
32. Cambridge, Account, p. ix
33. WJ. Wilson, A History of the Madras Army (5 vols, Madras, 1882) I, p. 8
34. Maj. Carnac to H. Verelst (Calcutta councillor), 13 Oct. 1762, BL (OIOC), F128/4; Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India, 1770-1830 (Delhi, 1995), pp. 37-41
35. Kolff, Nankar, p. 5
36. Ives, Voyage, p. 23
37. D. Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860-1940 (London, 1994), pp. 6-46
38. Lt.-Gen. S.L. Menezes, Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century (New Delhi, 1993), pp. 291-2
39. "The Bengal Sepoys have many religious prejudices which are hurtful to discipline: for instance their frequent ablutions and custom of stripping off their clothes and accoutrements before meals'. 'Account of the State of the Carnatic in 1782' by a royal military officer serving in India, BL (OIOC), Home Misc., vol. 84, pp. 945-6
40. Alavi, Sepoys, pp. 39, 44-5
41. Clive, 'Miscellaneous Papers', p. 20. The despairing Calcutta Council wrote to their commander-in-chief in 1768, 'at present our European Regiment compared to a Battalion of Sepoys appear like a Regiment of Dwarfs': Calcutta Sec. Cons., 17 Nov. 1768, BL (OIOC), Range A, vol. 8, p. 738
42. Gordon, Marathas, pp. 203-4
43. Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, pp. 29-30
44. Quarterly Review (1818), pp. 413-14
45. Col. Pearse (Bengal Army) to Hastings, n.d. but c. May 1781, 'Memoirs of Col. Thomas Deane Pearse', in Bengal Past and Present (Calcutta, 1908) in, p. 292
46. Malcolm, Political History II, pp. 226-7
47. Capt. I. Munro, A Narrative of the Military Operations in the Carnatic, 1780-1784 (London, 1789), p. 206
48. Col. W. Fullarton, Report of the Southern Campaign against Tipu Sultan, BL (OIOC), Home Misc., vol. 84, p. 387
49. Dow, Hindostan III, p. 2
50. Quarterly Review, p. 397
51. Clive to Directors, 28 Aug. 1767, Nat. lib. of Wales, Clive MS 59, pp. 1-14. The Parliamentary Committee of Secrecy inquiring into the East India Company wrote in 1773: 'If it were only on the principle of "divide et impera", the Moormen and the Gentoos should be separated into distinct companies': quoted in Menezes, Fidelity, p. 38 n. 27
52. Sir Patrick Cadell, A History of the Bombay Army (London, 1938), p. 162. Col. W. Fullerton, BL (OIOC), Home Misc., vol. 84, p. 923
53. 'Account of the State of the Camatic in 1782', p. 952
54. Orme, History II, p. 502. In 1777 Hindus could not take part in a punitive expedition Hastings sent against upper Burma because of the number of pagodas and priests there: Gale. Sec. Cons., 12 June 1777, BL (OIOC), Range A, vol. 41, p. 72
55. Lt.-Col. E.G. Phythian-Adams, The Madras Infantry, 1748-1943 (Madras, 1943), pp. 109-10
56. Cadell, History, p. 161
57. J.W. Fortescue, A History of the British. Army (12 vols, London, 1899) II, pp. 217, 223-6
58. Op. cit. Syed-Ghdam-Hossein Khan, Seir Mutaqherin (4 vols, Calcutta, 1902) n, p. 343
59. East India United Services Journal (1838), p. 103
60. Journal of the Transactions During the Siege of Fort St. George, 1758 (Madras, 1915), pp. 39-40
61. Capt. J. Williams, The Bengal Native Infantry (London, 1817), pp. 4-5
62. S.C. Hill, Yusuf Khan: The Rebel Commandant (London, 1914), p. 21
63. Maj. Caillaud to Madras, 8 Feb. 1758, Journal of the Siege, p. 259
64. Fortescue, History II, p. 467
65. Bryant, 'The Military Imperative'
66. Op. cit.; G.J. Bryant, 'Pacification in the Early British Raj, 1755-85', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 14 (Oct. 1985), pp. 1-19
67. Bryant, 'Military Imperative', p. 23
68. Lt. E. Moor, A Narrative of the operations of Capt. Little's Detachment...Against the Namab Tipu Sultan (London, 1794), pp. 386-7. Bayonets also gave an advantage to sepoys against some 'country' troops who were not accustomed to using them: 'A Sketch of a Plan for the Attack of a Mountainous Country in India' (n.d. but c.1784), BL, Add. MS 39 892, fo. 22
69. E. Buckle, Memoir of the Sendees of the Bengal Artillery... etc. (London, 1852), pp. 51-3
70. (Subedar Sita Ram), ed. J. Lunt, From Sepoy to Subedar (1st edn 1873; London, 1970), pp. 172-3
71. Wilson, History II, p. 174: 'There are but few instances where [the Indian Commandants] have been of much service, but frequent ones where they have done mischief (1785). At Madras in 1774 a lieutenant was cashiered for assaulting a subedar, but later reinstated because he claimed he did not know the usages of the service: Mad. Milit. Cons., 2, 22 and 28 Feb. 1774, BL (OIOC), Range 251, vol. 75, pp. 174, 215, 233-4. Clive 'Miscellaneous Papers', pp. 20-1
72. Dow, Hindustan II, p. 403
73. Hill, Yusuf Kkan, p. 241
74. Capt. I. Munro, A Narrative of Military Operations, 1780-1784 (London, 1789), p. 23
75. Barat, Bengal Infantry; Lunt, Sepoy