In June 1776, a group of Company officials conspired to overthrow the governor of the Madras Presidency, George Pigot. Both sides borrowed rhetoric from the more famous revolution then underway in America to frame the conflict as an issue of liberty and tyranny, but many in Britain saw the coup as little more than a cash grab in a settlement that had become synonymous with greed. This chapter revisits Pigot’s overthrow to show how this story of avarice was shaped by political conflict between two Indian rulers, Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah of Arcot and Tuljaji Bhonsle of Thanjavur. Both rulers had shored up their positions by offering patronage to various Company officials: Pigot had ties to Thanjavur, while his opponents had been courted by Arcot. Their competing interests fueled fierce debates in Madras about how the Company should intervene in Indian affairs – and who should direct that intervention. The Company’s European officers used the crisis to claim new authority over their civilian counterparts and led the coup against Pigot. In Britain, officials condemned the coup, but in Madras, it established a powerful precedent used by politically ambitious officers for decades to come.

In the last half of the eighteenth century, the East India Company’s formal armies expanded from a few undermanned garrisons to a sprawling field force of more than one hundred thousand sepoys. How was the Company able to build such a force so quickly, and what drew recruits to the service? This chapter places the Company’s sepoy armies within the wider military landscape of India, focusing on the south where the Company’s earliest military expansion took place. Some of the Company’s first Indian officers, including Muhammad Yusuf Khan, saw its armies as unique professional opportunities through which to circumvent established political and social hierarchies in India. Company officials, though, were uncomfortable with such ambitions and quickly took steps to stymie them. As opportunities for advancement within the Company shrank, though, sepoys looked for more creative ways to realize their aspirations, including deserting the Company to seek further promotions in another army. The interplay between the Company’s ever-growing need for military labor and sepoys’ own desires to capitalize on their value as soldiers radically reshaped the military economy in South India and beyond.