7 - Breaking the Officers’ Sword

Summary

The end of the East India Company came suddenly. In 1857, sepoys and colonial subjects across North India rose in a wave of rebellions that brought the Company near to collapse. Bloodily suppressing the revolt, the British state dissolved the Company, beginning the period of Crown rule in India. The Company’s armies were incorporated into the broader British military infrastructure, a development that has often been seen a natural extension of this transfer. This chapter inverts that assumption, suggesting instead that the end of Company rule was in fact a result of white officers’ failure to preserve their autonomy. For decades, officers had resisted reform and had extended their influence by arguing that they alone could maintain sepoys’ loyalty. The 1857 rebellions, originating in military garrisons, disproved those claims. The Company’s white soldiers and officers protested the Company’s dissolution – launching their own mutiny in 1859 – but their version of stratocracy proved unpersuasive in the wake of 1857. The Crown’s imperial Raj was no less militaristic than its Company predecessor, but no longer would local officers wield disproportionate influence over its policies.