Description
Oxford University Press, Published 2002. Hardcover, vi, 303 pp.; 22 cm; First Edition.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
18
Turn the pages with the arrows, keyboard, or a swipe.
Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition, no dust jacket as issued. Pictorial laminated paper over boards, the front carrying a sepia photograph of a military column on the march. Mild shelf and edge wear with light bumping to edges and corners, and a hint of color loss along the edges. Slight lifting to the laminate along the spine edge of the front board, and light abrasion to the lower corner of the back board. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Seven essays on the army the Raj actually ran, from the reconstruction after 1857 to the eve of the Second World War. The contributors work from recruiting records, welfare files and the Indianization debates rather than campaign narrative: how Punjab became the military base of the Indian Army, how pay, pensions and welfare were used to manufacture loyalty, what tied sepoys of the Bengal Army to the villages they came from, and how the officer corps was slowly and grudgingly opened to Indians. Partha Sarathi Gupta (1934-1999), professor at Delhi University, president of the Indian History Congress and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, died three years before publication; his essay on the Indianization debate closes the volume. Contents: Introduction, Anirudh Deshpande; Sepoys and the Colonial State, Punjab and the Military Base of the Indian Army 1849-1900, Tan Tai Yong; Reviving a 'Dead Letter', Military Indianization and the Ideology of Anglo-India 1885-91, Chandar S. Sundaram; Logistics and the Construction of Loyalty, The Welfare Mechanism in the Indian Army 1859-1913, Kaushik Roy; Sepoys' Links with Society, A Study of the Bengal Army 1858-95, Vivien Ashima Kaul; Military Reform in the Aftermath of the Great War, Intentions and Compulsions of British Military Policy 1919-25, Anirudh Deshpande; The Debate on Indianization 1918-39, Partha Sarathi Gupta; Bibliography; Index.