Sepoys in the British Overseas Expeditions (Vol-1, 1762-1826)

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In one of his bitter ironical essays on imperialism Rabindranath Tagore writes of the role of "our liveried brethren" who were engaged in soldiering for the empire. India follows 'shudra-dharma' and sends out her sons to fight another's war. "Those whom she rushes to attack at the behest of the British master's are not her enemies. And as soon as the fighting is done, she is hustled back into her servant quarters". Tagore wrote thus in 1925 and he looked upon this as the best evidence of the complete subjection of an entire people. Indeed the use of a subject people to bring other people under subjection was a peculiar achievement of the British Empire in the three continents of Asia, Africa and Australasia. Of this grand theme an important segment is studied by Dr. Premanshu Bandyopadhyay in the present work.

Perhaps we can identify four major components in the narrative which unfolds in these pages. First, the story of imperial expansion, Manila (1762-66), Sri Lanka or Ceylon and the Spice Islands (1781-97), Egypt (1801-02), Mauritius and Java (1810-11), Burma (1821-26). Second, a thread running through the entire narrative is the depiction of the human condition, the life of the Indian soldiers in barracks and battlefields. Third, there is the story of the sepoy's resistance on certain occasions to the exploitation they were subjected to - a story that restores our faith in the human spirit, fighting back despite of the odds against resistance. Fourth, there is also the chronicle of the system of deception which put the financial burden of England's imperial wars on the Indian tax payers, leading to argumentation of the 'drain of wealth from India.

To pursue in the archives these themes was not an easy task because the documentary sources are scattered in different archives depositories, almost as if they were deliberately dispersed to make a reconstruction of the whole story impossible. The author of this work has performed a heroic task in exploring these diverse sources to put together all the relevant data in these pages. He spent many years in England to collect unpublished document in the War Office, the Treasury records in the Public Records Office, the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, the Asia and African Section of the British Library (earlier known to my generation as the IOL, India Office Library) as well as the National Archives of India. And he tells us that he mopped up whatever that remained to be seen in the published records at familiar locations like the Bodlein at Oxford, the Cambridge University Library, the Institute of Historical Research in London, etc. I know of very few recent publications as solidly founded on research into primary sources as the present work. There are some other features of this work (e.g. the cartographic work, the tabulation of statistical data) which also merit our attention and commend this piece of research to the historians of modern India.

Now we may turn to the major themes in this work. First, the War machine. The author explains in the following pages the reasons why the British authorities were dependent on the Indian sepoys. The crux of the matter was that the British were unable to find cannon fodder elsewhere. This dependence was due not so much to the needs of the burgeoning empire in India, but the necessity of supplying cannon fodder to the global ambitions of the British ruling class. The seven 'Years' War (1756-63) and the Napoleonic Wars took their toll in Indian blood relentlessly. Only a leap of imperial imagination could bridge the gulf between India and the South East Asian Spice Islands and Manila in terms of strategic or commercial interests. But the logic of imperialism demanded the East Indian Company's participation in the expedition to Manila as well as the Spice Islands, and Indian blood was shed on those shores in 1762-66 and again 1780-97. In the case of the expedition to Egypt in 1801-02 there was a fig-leap of an excuse, i.e. the life and death struggle with Napoleon's France. It could be viewed as England's fight for self-preservations. On the other hand, was the sacrifice of many Indian soldiers in the Egyptian desert and the Red Sea region justifiable from India's point of view? Next was the turn of the French and the Dutch from Mauritius and Java (1810-11) so as to secure Britain's command over the Indian Ocean trade. The logic of expansion inevitably led in the next decade to the expedition to Burma (1824-26), the last of the military actions abroad covered in this volume.

The idea of this book was conceived sometime in 1968 when I was completing my London University PhD dissertation. Its area is concerned with the late nineteenth century debate in England on the question whether the alleged high land tax in British India had any correlation with the periodic devastating famine and agrarian distress in the country during the Victorian era. The debate was actually initiated by Digby. Naoroji and Dutta and it was turned into an issue in the British parliamentary election campaign in the nineties of the 19th century when Naoroji was contesting for a seat on a Liberal Party ticket. The British Committee of the Indian National Congress (BCINC) and its allies in England all projected the debate as a Liberal attack on the "Tory Mis-rule in India". In my dissertation published later on Indian Famine and Agrarian Problem, Calcutta 1986 I made an indepth attempt on the basis of the available records at the India Office Library to address the issue.

Besides this debate Naoroji simultaneously raised another burning issue concerning the expenses of the sepoy expedition from Bombay to Sudan (1896) charged upon the revenue of India. This time as well the BCINC launched another campaign on the question why India should be taxed for the Imperial Wars beyond the borders of India in which the Indian tax-payers had no interest whatsoever. Naoroji considered it one of main channels of the drainage of wealth from India.

In fact the sepoy expeditions from Calcutta, Bombay and Madras to Company's various overseas settlements against the French, the Dutch and the Spaniards date back to 1762 when for the first time the Madrassi sepoys were despatched to Manila against the Spaniards which was a part of the Seven Years War in Europe (1756-63) and since then throughout the second half of the 18th and the whole of the 19th centuries sepoys were continued to be despatched to over-seas at the call of the War Office in England and at the cost of the Company's Government in India. All the time the War Office in England kept on promising to defray the cost to the Government of India but never fully or partly complied with. But towards the end of the 19th century politically the issue died down and no academic interest has yet been taken to undertake any empirical research work on this subject. Hence from the beginning my attraction has been first to explore the human aspect of the fate of sepoys who had participated during the period of a century and a half, their pay, pension, prize money batta, ration, their grievances, disease and mortality and the general and special, if any, treatment they received in the discharge of their imperial duties overseas.

Secondly, the role of the sepoys in the British Overseas expedition has been generally highly acclaimed of by the British colonial officials as well as a section of the British army historians because of the sepoys' fidelity, alacrity and loyalty to the Company. But to the Indian historians, the history of the sepoys in general has still remained marginalised for various reasons amongst others is that be-cause of their professionally compelling circumstances they seemed to be devoid of any feeling or attachment to the country and the people they belonged to. This general characterisation of the sepoys may admittedly be one side of the whole episode. But I am inclined to investigate its other side; that is in case they faced any apathy, negligence, gross discrimination and racial hatred towards their professional grievances whether and how, behind the veil of fidelity alacrity and loyalty to the Company did they react to resist the order for overseas expedition leading to mutiny and rebellion. In that case it is also imperative to explore whether in the course of such resistance was there any reflection of the sepoys' unity and solidarity of their national identity irrespective of their caste and religious differences. Thirdly, my interest has been to assess and quantify the cost of each and every expedition during the period under review and to determine which authority, the Company's Government in India or the British Imperial Government in England, should justifiably be responsible for funding these expeditions. Naoroji has just initiated the debate which has to be examined contextual to the official record in order to substantiate the contention.