2 - Anglo-French Mercenaries in the ‘service’ of the Carnatic Princes, 1749–54

Summary

if [the] Europeans had not intervened in these affairs and had left the Indian princes to resolve their own quarrels, that might have been infinitely more beneficial to trade.

Thomas saunders (Governor of Madras) to Directors, 18 February 1751.

our rigid northern notions of justice will make us the dupes and fools to the more pliant politicks of these southern climates …

Captain (later General) Caillaud to Robert Orme (Madras civil servant, later chronicler of the Company's military exploits in India), 1755.

The trauma of the loss of Madras to the French in 1746 shook the London Directorate out of its pre-war complacency that the only military threat to the Company in India came from relatively ineffective ‘country’ forces. But the changes to their military establishment that they ordered at this time indicates that their intent was only to improve the deterrent value of their defences, not to adopt a more proactive grand strategy against either the French or the local Indian authorities. They sent out retired British Army officers (the most notable was Major Stringer Lawrence) to introduce greater regularity and discipline into the European corps at each of their Presidencies; but no expansion of their very modest European establishments (some six hundred in each) was envisaged.