The sepoys and the company : tradition and transition in Northern India, 1770-1830

"Why did the Indian Mutiny break out? How did the carefully built-up loyalty of the East India Company's native regiments - the sepoy army - crumble so incomprehensibly? These are some of the issues, not yet satisfactorily resolved, that this pioneering study addresses as it questions the existing historical and sociological understanding of the events leading to 1857." "It does so by exploring the ways in which the Indian regiments of the East India Company were formed over its first sixty years, when the Company was attempting to establish itself as a successor to the Mughal empire, as well as to the regional principalities of Northern India." "By its careful consideration of caste, class and society as factors which cemented military loyalty, this study adds significantly to our understanding of the role played by the army in the Company's rise to political dominance, and of the British impact on India."--Jacket. Read more...

Alavi examines the factors used by the British when forming the East India Company's Bengal Army in the period 1770-1830. Kinship groups, diet, and caste played as important a part as the more practical financial incentives offered by pension schemes and invalid pay in providing a loyal high-status army for the emerging colonial authority.

Alavi examines the factors used by the British when forming the East India Company's Bengal Army in the period 1770-1830. These factors, such as knship groups, diet, and caste as well as financial incentives offered by pension schemes and invalid pay, provided a loyal high-status army for the emerging colonial authority. 1. North Indian military traditions and the Company -- 2. The peasant army in the Gangetic plains -- 3. The invalid Thanah -- 4. The military experiment with the Hill people -- 5. Recruiting calvary in Upper India -- 6. Irregular calvary, Eurasian officers, and the Company, 1802-40 -- 7. The Gurkha experiment, 1764-1857. The author examines the factors used by the British when forming the East India Company's Bengal Army in the period 1770-1830. She shows that kinship groups, diet and caste played as important a part as the more practical financial incentives offered.