The hybrid military establishment of the East India Company in South Asia: 1750–1849

Abstract

During the seventeenth century, the East India Company (EIC) was a minor power in South Asia, repeatedly defeated in battle. However, this changed rapidly, beginning in the 1750s, as the EIC started projecting power from its coastal enclaves into the interior. One after other, the indigenous powers were defeated and destroyed. This article argues that the EIC’s military success was not merely the result of importing the military institutions that emerged in western Europe: there was no military revolution in early modern South Asia. Rather, the EIC blended imported British military institutions and techniques with South Asia’s indigenous military traditions, creating a hybrid military establishment in which South Asian manpower, animals, and economic resources were crucial. The article focuses on the construction of the EIC’s military establishment by concentrating on three spheres: military technology, manpower management, and logistics.

Myths of military revolution: European expansion and Eurocentrism

“…The first use of volley fire by European drilled infantry in the East only came in the 1740s in India, almost 250 years after Europeans had established their presence in the Indian Ocean, and right at the tail end of the period that Parker's and McNeill's arguments claim to explain (McNeill, 1982: 117, 142;Parker, 1996Parker, [1988. Recent historiography has stressed that rather than Western tactics reigning supreme, both Europeans and local forces hybridized in learning from the other (Gommans and Kolff, 2001;Lorge, 2008;Peers, 2007Peers, , 2011Roy, 2011Roy, , 2013. For example, while South Asian armies came to use more infantry and artillery, Europeans adapted irregular cavalry and Indian logistical solutions.…”

“…In the second half of the 17th century, combined Dutch East India Company forces across South-East Asia never exceeded 12,000 (Reid, 1982: 7), with individual campaigns seldom mustering more than 1000 Dutch troops (Charney, 2004; Marshall, 1980; Ricklefs, 1993). As late as 1788, there were only 8045 British soldiers in the whole of India (Roy, 2011: 208). Even in the 19th century, long after the formation of huge territorial empires that were very different from their largely maritime early modern predecessors, European states rarely sent large armies abroad in pursuit of trans-continental conquest (MacDonald, 2014: 28–33).…”

“…Parker (2002) and others stress the importance of trace italienne fortresses in allowing European forces in the Indian Ocean littoral to hold out against much larger attacking forces, yet these are said to require very large forces to be effective, forces that, as discussed earlier, were simply not available. Historians and contemporary observers like Wellington often maintained that Indian artillery was as good as that of the East India Company in the later 1700s (Roy, 2011: 200–201). Speaking more generally of the East India Company’s conquest of India, Peers (2011: 82) argues that “defined in technological or organizational terms, military superiority had a relatively minor role.” As discussed later, gun-armed sailing ships, often portrayed as the most decisive Western technological innovation, do not invalidate this conclusion.…”

“…A large majority of its troops were recruited locally, some drilled to fight as European-style infantry, many others employed as irregular cavalry. As in the Americas and Africa, local logistical support was critical in determining the success or failure of campaigns, with company forces adopting Indian practices of resupply (Peers, 2007: 248; Roy, 2011: 210–211). Even in the area where the company might have been thought to be most self-sufficient, credit and finance, it depended on South Asian sources for up to 90% of its financing (Roy, 2013: 1139).…”