Book contents
- The Company’s Sword
- Critical Perspectives on Empire
- The Company’s Sword
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Spelling and Place Names
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Forging the Sword
- 2 The Sepoy’s Oath
- 3 Mercenaries, Diplomats, and Deserters
- 4 The Other Revolution of 1776
- 5 The Empire Preserved
- 6 Stratocracy
- 7 Breaking the Officers’ Sword
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Stratocracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2022
- The Company’s Sword
- Critical Perspectives on Empire
- The Company’s Sword
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Spelling and Place Names
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Forging the Sword
- 2 The Sepoy’s Oath
- 3 Mercenaries, Diplomats, and Deserters
- 4 The Other Revolution of 1776
- 5 The Empire Preserved
- 6 Stratocracy
- 7 Breaking the Officers’ Sword
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
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.
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- Information
- The Company's SwordThe East India Company and the Politics of Militarism, 1644–1858, pp. 171 - 206Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022