The Military Marketplace in India, 1850–60

Abstract

The recent historiography of the British militarization of India has taken various forms. One debate concerns the introduction into the sub-continent of European military technology, training, tactics and organization. A review of these impacts has been provided by Kaushik Roy, who emphasizes the way in which what he calls a military synthesis of Western and customary practices progressed at different paces among the indigenous rulers’ diverse armies. Roy, however, devotes little attention to recruitment and especially to the ways in which the British in particular dealt with local leaders who commanded military levies. In contrast, Randolph Cooper argues that the decisive development which explains British military success in the early nineteenth century was the East India Company’s ability to dominate the regional military labour market. In an extension of the idea of the military-fiscal state developed by John Brewer, Cooper stresses that the British had the sheer financial muscle not only to pay their own forces well, but also to buy off subordinate rulers and their levies, particularly of light cavalry, who served their opponents. The Company, readily able to borrow on a sufficient scale to make that happen, dominated the military labour market and thus ensured Britain’s military security in the sub-continent.¹