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6 - Stratocracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2022

Christina Welsch
Affiliation:
College of Wooster, Ohio
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Summary

White officers’ claim that they alone could wield that blade that “ruled” India became a dominant ideology within the colonial state in the early nineteenth century. This chapter argues that this “stratocracy” was the product of two entangled phenomena, rooted in the Company’s growing paramountcy over India’s military landscape. At the turn of the nineteenth century, sepoys, European soldiers, and officers faced a diminished military labor market with few opportunities for employment outside of the Company’s aegis. In 1806, frustrated at these limits and changes in the Company’s service, sepoys launched a violent, but brief mutiny at the garrison of Vellore, galvanizing a wave of colonial panic about further unrest. When in 1809 white officers launched their own mutiny in Madras, they warned that refusing their demands would shatter their control over their sepoys – leading to another Vellore. The gambit worked: The civilian governor of Madras was recalled in disgrace and the mutinying officers escaped without punishment. For decades to come, the rhetoric first articulated in 1809 remained a powerful tool through which military officials overruled civilians in Company affairs.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Company's Sword
The East India Company and the Politics of Militarism, 1644–1858
, pp. 171 - 206
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Stratocracy
  • Christina Welsch, College of Wooster, Ohio
  • Book: The Company's Sword
  • Online publication: 08 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108983112.008
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  • Stratocracy
  • Christina Welsch, College of Wooster, Ohio
  • Book: The Company's Sword
  • Online publication: 08 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108983112.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Stratocracy
  • Christina Welsch, College of Wooster, Ohio
  • Book: The Company's Sword
  • Online publication: 08 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108983112.008
Available formats
×