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The Economics of Reproduction: Horse-breeding in early colonial India, 1790–1840*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2012

SAURABH MISHRA
SAURABH MISHRA*
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The expansionist policies of the early colonial regime led to a significant emphasis on the importance of a large cavalry, but horses of a suitable quality appeared difficult to obtain within the subcontinent. Several measures were consequently taken to encourage horse-breeding, including the establishment of government studs and policies directed towards the creation of a ‘native’ market in quality horses. However, these measures did not appear to produce any significant results, despite sustained implementation. This paper examines in detail colonial policies on horse-breeding and links them to the larger economic logic of empire. It touches on several related themes such as early colonial interaction with ‘native’ agents, the question of free markets, and the impact of utilitarian and physiocratic doctrines on colonial policies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 5 , September 2012 , pp. 1116 - 1144
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Lieutenant Colonel Bhalla, J. S., History of the Remount and Veterinary Corps (Additional Directorate General, Remount and Veterinary, New Delhi, 1988), p. xvGoogle Scholar.

2 A board for superintending horse-breeding activities was formed in 1794. If a date of inception for remount operations has to be chosen, perhaps this is as appropriate a date as any other.

3 The first phrase was employed by Sarkar, Sumit in ‘Popular Culture, Community and Power: Three Studies of Modern Indian Social History’, Studies in History, 8 (1992), p. 309CrossRefGoogle Scholar, while the second was used by Roy, Tirthankar in ‘Questioning the Basics’, Economic and Political Weekly, 37, no. 23 (8–14 June, 2002), pp. 2223–228Google Scholar. See also Sarkar, Sumit, ‘The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies’ in Writing Social History (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1997), pp. 82–108Google Scholar; Parthasarthi, Prasannan, ‘The State of Indian History’, Journal of Social History, 37, no. 1 (2003), pp. 47–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kennedy, Dane, ‘Imperial History and Post-colonial Theory’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 24, no. 3. (1996), pp. 345–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Parry, Benita, one of the leading critics of post-colonial studies, looks at this linguistic turn as a strategy that ‘reduces the dynamics of historical processes to the rules of language and. . . permits the circumvention and relegation of the economic impulses to colonial conquest’: see ‘The Postcolonial: Conceptual Category or Chimera?’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 27 (1997), p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Parry, Benita, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (Routledge, London, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Quotation marks should be automatically assumed whenever the word ‘native’ is used throughout this paper.

5 This paragraph and the next are largely based on the comprehensive survey of horse-breeding complexes in eighteenth-century India by Jos Gommans, whose monograph is the only existing full-length survey of this extremely important subject in the modern South Asian context. See Gommans, Jos, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c.1710–1780 (Brill, Leiden, 1997)Google Scholar; see also his article: ‘The Horse Trade in Eighteenth Century South Asia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, XXXVII, no. 3 (1994), pp. 228–50.

6 Comparing horses reared in the plains with the hill-bred ones, William Moorcroft noted in his journal that: ‘There is much difference between the manner in which a horse bred in the plains and one bred in the mountains proceeds. . . The former climbs with eager steps endeavouring to overcome the difficulty of the road but does not give himself sufficient time to appreciate and prepare for the irregularities. . . The latter sets out slowly and circumspectly, places his feet with deliberate caution and gains his object by a succession of starts proportioned to the obstacle which present themselves. The former, if he makes a false step can scarcely recover. . . The latter seldom makes a false step through the command he retains over his limbs’; see Oriental and India Office Collections (hereafter OIOC), MSS EUR D. 236, pp. 20–21. Though we will have occasion to refer to Moorcroft in the following pages, it should be mentioned here that he was one of the first fully trained British veterinary officials to work in India. Though it was hoped that his tenure in India would produce a positive effect on the health and fitness of the cavalry horses, he ended up having little impact on veterinary or horse breeding policies.

7 Chakravarti, Ranabir, ‘Early Medieval Bengal and the Trade in Horses: A Note’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, XLII, no. 2 (1999), p. 195Google Scholar.

8 Horses from these regions were also in great demand during the Mughal period. Talking about this period, Chaudhuri, K. N. notes that, ‘the extent to which breeding of fine and specialised horses had become the preserve of nomadic pastoralists in Central Asia, Iran, and the Arabian peninsula can be seen from the fact that the two leading trading nations of Asia, India and China, preferred to import their war horses rather than breed them at home. . . as compared to a Badakshan pony or the Arab blood-stock, the indigenous Indian horse remained a second-best choice’ in Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990), p. 278Google Scholar.

9 Some empirical justification for this belief is provided by the huge historical variations in the nature of horses. For example, the Destrier, a warhorse used in medieval Europe, was much taller, slower, and stronger than modern horses: see Barendse, R. J., ‘The Feudal Mutation: Military and Economic Transformations of the Ethnosphere in the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries’, Journal of World History, 14, no. 4 (December 2003), p. 513CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Piggott, J. P., writing one of the earliest treatises on horse-breeding in India about the highly desirable Toorkoman breed, noted that: ‘From the high estimation and great respect in which this horse is held by the natives, a Toorkoman is rarely procured by Europeans, who, in general decline them at [a] price equal to what a merchant can readily obtain from the opulent native’ in Treatise on the Horses in India (James White, Calcutta, 1794), p. xGoogle Scholar.

12 The report on the reorganization of the Indian army, published in the wake of the Revolt of 1857, noted that, ‘the introduction of the tall, weak-constitutioned modern English horse into Europe has ruined them as it has done the studs in India. . . the introduction of the English horse has been fatal to our studs’ in Papers Connected with the Re-organization of the Army in India, supplementary to the Report of the Army Commission (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1859), p. 85.

13 Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, p. 85.

14 Despite this obvious deficiency, the heavy reliance of the natives on horses sometimes worked in favour of the British. Major Durham, for instance, noted that, ‘the native cavalry in India. . . move around in great bodies; but are easily avoided or seldom take effect against our troops who are formed in lines of great extent and no great depth’. Quoted in Butalia, Romesh C., The Evolution of the Artillery in India: From the Battle of Plassey to the Revolt of 1857 (Allied Publishers, Delhi, 1998), pp. 54–55Google Scholar.

15 The Company relied almost completely on native allied states for supplying them with a cavalry, which did not prove to be a very good idea in 1791; in Callahan, Raymond, The East India Company and Army Reform, 1783–1798 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972), pp. 4–6Google Scholar.

16 This last criterion was very strictly imposed, and was relaxed only in 1816 after several discussions when it was realized that ‘by too rigorous an adherence to restrictive regulations. . . relating to the height of cavalry remount horses many valuable undersized animals have been lost’: OIOC, F/4/543/13257, p. 882.

17 Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, p. 85.

18 The Captain noted that: ‘Their predatory habits, their success and safety in their freebooting expeditions depending so much on the goodness of their horses, was the chief inducement to them probably to pay such attention to the breed. . . they were chiefly formidable to their neighbours from their boldness and dexterity and the fleetness of their horses’ in OIOC, F/4/486/11667, dated 14 March 1814 (not paginated).

19 Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, p. 89.

20 Lethbridge, Roper Sir, The Golden Book of India: A Genealogical and Biographical Dictionary of the Ruling Princes, Chiefs, Nobles, and other Personages, Titled or Decorated of the Indian Empire (Aakar Books, Delhi, 2005; originally published in 1893), p. 10Google Scholar.

21 Lethbridge, The Golden Book of India, p. 73.

22 Moral and Material Progress of India, 1871–2 (Government of India Press, Calcutta, 1872), p. 36.

23 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth notes that: ‘The authoritarian system of [physiocratic] politics was derived directly from a determination to protect – if not to institute – the market’ in Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth Century France (Cornell University Press, New York, 1976), p. 46Google Scholar.

24 Guha, Ranajit notes that, according to Company officials influenced by these doctrines: ‘Given permanent proprietary rights and a buyers’ market in land, there was no reason why Bengal should not be blessed with the capital and initiative of its own indigenous entrepreneurs’ in Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement (Orient Longman, Delhi, 1982), pp. 48–49Google Scholar. A lot has been written about the influence of utilitarian and physiocratic doctrines in fashioning land settlement policies in South Asia, and it is generally agreed that these European philosophies did, to some extent, fashion agricultural policies in India. A very good summary of the debate on the relative importance of local Indian conditions and European philosophies can be found in Bhattacharya, Neeladri, ‘Colonial State and Agrarian Society’, in Stein, Burton (ed.), The Making of Agrarian Policy in British India, 1770–1900 (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1992), pp. 114–39Google Scholar.

25 See Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, ‘Land Tax, Property Rights and Peasant Insecurity in Colonial India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 20, no. 1 (1992), pp. 1–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Otter, Sandra Den, ‘Rewriting the Utilitarian Market: Colonial Law and Custom in mid Nineteenth-Century British India’, The European Legacy, 6, no. 2 (2001), pp. 177–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stokes, EricEnglish Utilitarians and India (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989)Google Scholar.

26 Richard Baird Smith (1818–61) was a distinguished engineer in the East India Company Army and worked on several irrigation projects. His crowning achievement was the survey of the great famine of 1861 and the safeguards he proposed to prevent such disasters: see Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004).

27 Stokes, Eric, The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 OIOC, F/4/127/2369, p. 37.

29 OIOC, L/MIL//431, p. 214.

30 This testimony read as follows: ‘From my own goodwill and opinion of the said. . . I agree to become security for the faithful performance of all the duties required of him as specified in his Mutchilka agreement and further, should the said. . . leave his residence in the said village of. . . taking the said stallion with him, I bind myself to produce the said. . . and horse, or to become liable to such punishment as would be apportioned to the said. . . should he be produced and found guilty’ in OIOC, F/4/93/1891, p. 74.

31 OIOC, F/4/543/13257, p. 733.

32 This did not go unnoticed, and one official noted rather bluntly that, ‘of the discovery [of the Zemindary system], as of all others, Major Frazer should not be defrauded’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/431, p. 213.

33 OIOC, Board's Collections, file no. F/4/1524/60209, throughout. These were high-caste, land-owning groups in western India.

34 Kumar, Ravinder, Western India in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in the Social History of Maharastra (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1968), p. 58Google Scholar.

35 Captain Jameson from Allygaum noted that: ‘Few in the distant districts were at first suspicious of the motives which induced government to give them fillies but on seeing their neighbours in quiet possession of them they have come forward to request that they may also furnished, and when the next supply arrives from the Bengal stud I shall lose no time in distributing them’ in OIOC, F/4/1524/60209, p. 5.

36 OIOC, F/4/1518/59945, p. 17.

37 Ranajit Guha noted in the context of land settlements that the policy of capitalist enterprise, in the absence of a sovereign market within the colony, could only become ‘an apologia of quasi-feudalism’. Perhaps this observation is equally applicable in the context of horse-breeding practices. Quoted in Bhattacharya, ‘Colonial State and Agrarian Society’, p. 115.

38 OIOC, L/MIL/7/902, dated 5 October 1864 (not paginated).

39 OIOC, Board's Collections, file no. F/4/127/2369, p. 135.

40 Captain Wyatt, superintendent of the stud at Kathiawar, for instance, complained about a dealer know as Sunderjee in a report written in 1814, noting that: ‘In the circumstance of the breeders of horses in this country having had such little communication with Europeans is to be discovered one cause to which it is owing that Sunderjee, and other native merchants, have been allowed to monopolize the produce of the country’ in OIOC, F/4/486/11667, letter dated 23 December 1814 (not paginated).

41 Siddiqui, Asiya (ed.), ‘Introduction’, in Trade and Finance in Colonial India, 1750–1860 (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1995), p. 42Google Scholar.

42 Pouchepadass, J., Markovits, C. and Subramanyam, S. (eds), Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950 (Anthem Press, Delhi, 2006)Google Scholar; see especially Neeladri Bhattacharya ‘Predicaments of Mobility: Frontier Traders in the Nineteenth Century’ in the same volume.

43 Such doubts and uncertainties could lead to ‘information panics’. Bayly, C. A. notes that negative stereotypes of India were a product of ‘the weakness and blindness of the state at the fringes of its knowledge, rather than a set of governing principles at its core’ in Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), p. 370Google Scholar.

44 Kumar, Dharma, Land and Caste in South India: Agricultural Labour in Madras Presidency in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frykenberg, R. E., Guntur District, 1788–1848: A History of Local Influences and Central Authority in South Asia (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar; Mukjherjee, Nilamani and Frykenberg, R. E., ‘The Ryotwari System and Social Organisation in the Madras Presidency’, in Frykenberg, R. E. (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1969)Google Scholar; Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal.

45 Parthasarthi, Prasannan, The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720–1800 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 An official noted in 1800 that: ‘Some arrangement might however be useful to prevent any species of influence, in an open and free market where foreigners assemble from all quarters of Hindoostan, hundreds of whom have never seen a European and are of course easily alarmed. I am sorry to state from good authority that occurrences of a similar nature have totally ruined the nuk-na-murd mela (fair) where formerly numbers of the large Moung bullocks were annually brought from the Moung for sale’ in OIOC, Board's Collections, file no. F/4/93/1891, pp. 98–99. Chakravorty, Gayatri Spivak also talks about the impact of the figure of the British on horseback stalking the virgin Indian countryside in ‘The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives’, History and Theory, 24 (1985), pp. 247–70Google Scholar.

47 OIOC, MSS EUR F 128/121, p. 28.

48 OIOC, MSS EUR 128/121, pp. 28–30.

49 The role of the native collaborators or compradors in the high noon of the British empire has been sufficiently documented. However, not much work has been done on their activities during the initial years of wars and annexations.

50 A memorandum on studs noted in 1816 that: ‘It is universally known that the natives of India are extremely unwilling to part with productive mares and any attempt therefore to procure three hundred productive mares in a few months could not be expected to succeed’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/431, p. 212.

51 OIOC, F/4/127/2369, pp. 34–47.

52 Already in the firing line in 1802, a stud administrator offered the following explanation: ‘The first charges are heavy, but the value of the produce soon equals, finally overbalances, the amount. The stud is now in the second of these stages. The heavy disbursements have taken place, the stock in had in equal to them, and if we continue to give an efficient support to the establishment the value of the produce in a few years will exceed by an increasing ration, the aggregate amount of expenditure. The stud is at present in that state, which demands our care, in order that the ends proposed from its institution may be ultimately attained’ in OIOC, F/4/127/2369, p. 209.

53 In 1804, merely four years before the final abolition of the stud, a committee formed to report on the stud noted that: ‘We have deemed the condition of the stud to be such as to answer the expectation entertained regarding the progress and success of the undertaking’ in OIOC, F/4/166/2833, p. 4.

54 They were therefore ‘decidedly of opinion that it is advisable to discontinue entirely the establishment of stud at Ganjam’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/461, letter dated 30 March 1808 (not paginated).

55 Writing about the frugal lifestyle of Indian governor-generals, Victor Jacquemont noted that: ‘[One] may easily imagine that there are people who talk loudly of the dissolution of the empire and the world's end, when they behold the temporary ruler of Asia riding on horseback, plainly dressed, and without escort, or on his way into the country with his umbrella under his arm’. Cited in Collingham, E. M., Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, 1800–1947 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001), p. 54Google Scholar.

56 OIOC, L/MIL/5/431, p. 210.

57 Letter from the Stud Committee, OIOC, L/MIL/5/461, dated 30 March 1808 (not paginated).

58 For details on corruption within the forestry department, see Pathak, Akhileshwar, Laws, Strategies, Ideologies: Legislating Forests in Colonial India (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2002)Google Scholar.

59 Callahan notes that: ‘The company [did] not having any scheme for retiring an officer because of age, ill health, or even gross incompetence. . . The only hope of retiring to England, if one had not acquired a “competency” was to apply for a pension from Lord Clive's fund. This trust fund's. . . resources were limited and its pensions correspondingly small’ in The East India Company and Army Reform, p. 22.

60 Dirks, Nicholas B., The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 OIOC, L/MIL/5/431, p. 212.

62 OIOC, L/MIL/5/431, p. 212.

63 Referring to the board's inefficiency, Moorcroft noted that ‘it may. . . surely be said generally without offence that men are not apt to attach quite a due degree of importance or responsibility to the performance of duties which are undertaken gratuitously and merely in superaddition to their regular, and more important avocations’ in OIOC, F/4/543/13257, p. 996.

64 Frazer noted that: ‘Pusa comes nearer to the climate of England than Arabia and differs but little from that of Parma, where the cows give almost as much milk as in England’ in OIOC, F/4/93/1891, p. 314.

65 Edwards, Peter, Horses of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The demand for Arabian horses continued undiminished in South Asia throughout the period of this study and, in fact, exceeded supply by a considerable margin. However, the new emphasis on British horses at colonial studs reflects the somewhat higher status of home-grown stallions in official reckoning. If Arabian horses had completely replaced English stallions at colonial studs, this would have considerably reduced expenses as Arabian stallions were easier to procure than English horses, which had to be imported at considerable cost.

66 This land was acquired in 1801. See OIOC, L/MIL/5/461, letter dated 28 July 1802 (not paginated). After the lease ran out on this farm, a similar property was acquired at Kingsbury Green in Edgeware. See OIOC, L/MIL/5/460, letter dated 23 May 1821 (not paginated).

67 Writing in 1794 J. P. Piggott, a lieutenant in the cavalry, rated some Indian breeds like the ‘Irakee’, ‘Iranee’, ‘Candahar’, ‘Cozakee’, and ‘Mojinnis’ breeds very highly: see Treatise on the Horses in India, pp. 1–10.

68 The other officers were Captain Barbarie and Captain Carnegy, and the complaints related mostly to the question of personal use of stud resources.

69 In a letter to the secretary of the Military Board, he urged that ‘as soon as possible, for the baboos here may suspect what I am after, you will be pleased to send to the office of captain Hawkings Deputy Commissary General for Kalee Baboo and also for Neelmoney his father, both formerly Sircars at the Hauper stud and have them examined on oath’ in OIOC, F/4/1518/59945, p. 80 (emphasis added).

70 The commission noted that, ‘in consideration of the length of his service[,] of his large and helpless family and of some circumstances of irritation. . . acting upon a weak and irritable mind, it ventures to submit whether he may not in some way be made an object of mercy’ in OIOC, F/4/1517/59944, p. 12.

71 The babu apparently not only had access to stud finances but was also privy to the personal finances of English officers at the stud. In OIOC, F/4/1518/59945, pp. 13–15.

72 The Collector of Berhampore suggested, with respect to the Poosa stud, that: ‘I conceive, the authority of the government may make a provision for the delivery of a reasonable share of the straw of each village and introduce a clause to this effect, in the public grants, under which the proprietor holds its right of possession; few villages will be induced voluntarily to dispose of this article, even if an extraordinary compensation were offered; but, I do not apprehend they will consider it any distress or hardship should a provision be made, in the manner I suggest’ in OIOC, F/4/127/2369, p. 35.

73 The administrator, however, ‘soon realised that their principal motive for visiting me was to complain of various vexations to which they are (or suppose themselves) subjected, and that their aim was to solicit the protection of your board’ in OIOC, F/4/93/1891, p. 292.

74 The charwahas were also ‘presented. . . with turbands [sic] and some trifling presents to conciliate their good opinion, for they are almost as wild as their cattle which are brought up in the woods of Surriance [sic]’. The visit also represented an opportunity for ‘reciprocal benefit’, and Major Frazer tried to convince them to use Nagore bulls for breeding, but they seemed suspicious of British motives in lending them the bulls. In OIOC, F/4/93/1891, p. 293.

75 Letter addressed to the Board of Superintendence for Horse Breeding: OIOC, F/4/93/1891, p. 301.

76 OIOC, L/MIL/5/395, p. 75.

77 Veterinary medicine, more than any other branch of modern science, was inseparably intertwined with the question of financial viability. Before farmers even called in the farrier, they asked themselves if the benefits justified the cost of treatment. Of course, the cost-benefit was seriously contemplated in the case of human treatment too but people were perhaps not as easily dispensable as animals. See Worboys, Michael, ‘Germ Theories of Disease and British Veterinary medicine, 1860–1890’, Medical History, 35, no. 3 (1991), p. 312CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

78 Contrary to this, the veterinarian's primary battle in the mother country was fought against doctors who practised human medicine and who assumed authority in several areas that should have been the veterinarian's domain. See Wilkinson, Lise, Animals and Disease: An Introduction to the History of Comparative Medicine (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

79 These practitioners were required to have the following attainments: ‘They must have attended Mr Coleman's lectures and practice at the college three months at least, whatever might have been their previous qualifications, before they can claim an examination and they must also have attended lectures on human anatomy, physiology and surgery, material medica, chemistry, and the practice of physics, either before or since they have been at the college’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/395, p. 80. Edward Coleman was a noted British authority on veterinary medicine and lectured at the veterinary college in Camden, London.

80 OIOC, L/MIL/5/395, pp. 75–80.

81 An official noted that: ‘Regiments have frequently been for long periods without veterinary surgeons, there being no inducement to go out to India, but on the contrary from the probability of remaining on foreign service for many years and being obliged to return home for recovery of health with broken constitution. . . to retire and linger out a miserable life upon half pay, besides being paid by the Honourable Company in India, the increase of King's pay does not go on’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/388, p. 83.

82 These ‘boys’ were to be ‘instructed in the duties of a farrier such as shoeing, administering medicines, performing operations, the knowledge of diseases of horses, with the usual remedies. When old enough [and] considered by the superintendent qualified to act as farriers, they [were] posted to the different regiments. . .’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/388, pp. 87–89.

83 The only clear benefit was that it facilitated the shoeing of regiments, an operation for which cavalry regiments had earlier had to rely on the expertise of Naulbunds. In OIOC, L/MIL/5/388, pp. 87–89.

84 OIOC, L/MIL/5/395, pp. 61–111.

85 Hodgson noted that: ‘It is with regret I state that the country born young men I have under my charge have not been of such description that I could undertake to teach again as this class labours under disabilities that prevent further advancement’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/395, letter dated 18 May 1822, p. 80. Hodgson also argued that his wards should not be employed at full pay and batta as they were not fully competent. This proposal was, however, rejected by the Medical Board. See OIOC, F/4/738/20145, pp. 1–2.

86 Captain R. H. Sneyd, commanding officer, Governor General's Body Guard, OIOC, L/MIL/5/395, letter dated 21 May 1822, p. 80. Major Frazer also noted in 1794 that: ‘I am convinced that the natives of India have no rational system of treating the diseases of horses being totally unacquainted with anatomy and circulation of blood’, quoted in Bhalla, History of Remount and Veterinary Corps, p. 6.

87 Bayly, Empire and Information, pp. 247–83.

88 From the Medical Board to Hodgson, in OIOC, L/MIL/5/395, p. 93.

89 Severe cattle diseases broke out in the Bengal presidency in 1817, 1824, and 1836. See Palmer, D. C. Dr, Report on the Calcutta Epizootic or Cattle Disease of 1864 in Calcutta and its Neighbourhood (Government of India Press, Calcutta, 1865), p. 2Google Scholar.

90 Moorcroft, W., Directions for using the Contents of the Portable Horse Medicine Chest, Adapted for India and Prepared by W. Moorcroft (Publisher not mentioned, London, 1795)Google Scholar.

91 Beinart, William, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770–1950 (Oxford University Press, New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Davis, Diana K., ‘Brutes, Beasts and Empire: Veterinary Medicine and Environmental Policy in French North Africa and British India’, Journal of Historical Geography, 34, issue 2 (2007) pp. 242–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, Karen, ‘Tropical Medicine and Animal Diseases: Onderstepoort and the Development of Veterinary Science in South Africa, 1908–1950’, Journal of South African Studies, 31, no. 3 (2005), pp. 513–29CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Gilfoyle, Daniel, ‘Veterinary Immunology as Colonial Science: Method and Quantification in the Investigation of Horsesickness in South Africa, c. 1905–1945’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 61, no. 1 (2005), pp. 26–65CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

92 The secretary to the Military Department noted, in a letter dated 15 September 1851, that ‘there appears to be not the slightest doubt that the stud bred horses are now not only bad but far worse comparatively than they were thirty years ago’ in OIOC, L/MIL/5/389, p. 24.

93 Letter from J. Currie, in OIOC, L/MIL/7/9626, dated 9 September 1851 (not paginated).

94 Moorcroft travelled extensively to the northern parts of the subcontinent and as far as Central Asia while working as a stud superintendent. Though these trips were ostensibly made to study and procure breeds of horses, he is believed by historians to have been a military spy and one of the first actors in ‘the great game’ on the northern fringes of the Indian colony. See Dictionary of National Biography.

95 He noted, for example, that, ‘the whole point of the present turns upon the comparative competency of judgement of the two parties as applied to the subject of horse-breeding in India both generally and in detail. It may be supposed either that I am inadequate to fulfil the duties of the mission with which I was charged by the honourable the court of directors or that there may exist some defectiveness in the system of controlling power’ in OIOC, F/4/543/13257, pp. 988–89.

96 Referring to Moorcroft's travels, the Military Board noted that it ‘could never sanction arrangements which if they had been carried into effect would have involved an expense of many lacks [sic] of rupees in the purchase of cattle in foreign countries in wild and romantic excursions to the banks of the Timor and the plains of Chinese Tartary or in a fanciful overland trip through Vienna to Paris for the purpose of importing into Bengal the rejected and reduced horses of the French and Austrian cavalry, measures against which the board. . . considered requisite solemnly to protest’ in OIOC, F/4/543/13257, p. 1045.

97 In 1827, for instance, 16 British-trained veterinary practitioners boarded ships for India at Gravesend. See OIOC, L/MIL/9/434, pp. 10–11.

98 This co-option is somewhat reflected in the fact that even purely medical procedures like post-mortems on dead cattle used to be carried out by military officials during this early phase. In 1800, Major Frazer, displaying a rather impressive knowledge of medical terminology, wrote the following report on a post-mortem: ‘Upon dissecting, the spleen immediately presented itself enlarged to an enormous size in the shape of a triangle upon turning it over a quantity of extravasated blood appeared and the lower part of the abdomen was full of sanguinuous serum. Upon minute observation a small aperture was observed in the splenic artery which very probably burst from the exertion during the act of copulation and was the immediate cause of his death.’ Quoted in Bhalla, History of Remount and Veterinary Corps, p. 8.

99 The Civil Veterinary Department was only established in the 1860s, which led to a divestment of military connections. This decade saw a general trend towards the shrinking of military authority in the medical field, as medical and sanitary administration also started coming into its own during this period.