The Sepoys and the Company
Subtitle: Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770-1830
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: September 26, 1996
Language: eng
Number of pages: 340
ISBN-13: 9780195634846
Description: Why did the Indian Mutiny break out? How did the carefully built-up loyalty of the East India Company's native regiments - the sepoy army - crumble so incomprehensibly? These are some of the issues, not yet satisfactorily resolved, that this pioneering study addresses as it questions the existing historical and sociological understanding of the events leading to 1857.

It does so by exploring the ways in which the Indian regiments of the East India Company were formed over its first sixty years, when the Company was attempting to establish itself as a successor to the Mughal empire, as well as to the regional principalities of Northern India.

By its careful consideration of caste, class and society as factors which cemented military loyalty, this study adds significantly to our understanding of the role played by the army in the Company's rise to political dominance, and of the British impact on India.