Author : Saikat K Bose
This paper examines the establishment of the British Empire in India from the perspective of complexity theory and organisation theory, revisiting John Robert Seeley’s characterisation of it as acquired in a “fit of absent-mindedness”. Conceptualising eighteenth-century India as a dynamic field of interacting agents (polities, commercial organisations, and mobile social groups) subject to recurrent shocks and feedback effects, it reinterprets the East India Company’s expansion as a function of its comparatively adaptive organisational practices. It shows how the resulting imperial structure (the Raj) was neither the outcome of coherent imperial design with deliberate planning nor a historical accident, but a bottom-up, cumulative, and largely unintended emergent behaviour within a complex adaptive system. It also shows how the Company continually adapted to systemic instabilities and feedback processes to sustain its advantage.
Saikat Bose, “A ‘Fit of Absentmindedness’: An Application of Complexity Theory to the British Empire in India,” ORF Occasional Paper No. 556, Observer Research Foundation, June 2026.
After the Portuguese first made landfall in India in 1948, Europeans continued to arrive on India’s coasts as they searched for the ‘Indies’, a land of fabled wealth, not India specifically. Their inland presence remained limited to isolated trading posts and religious missions for 200 years, until they became major stakeholders in the local polity in the early-eighteenth century. There were several reasons for this, including a shift to drilled infantry-based warfare,[a] to which India had no ready response. The English soon outdid their European compatriots, manipulating systemic instabilities more deftly due to supportive and adaptive organisational cultures, in contrast to, for instance, the French, who had access to similar technologies but operated under different social constraints.
Writing in 1883, the historian Sir John Seeley remarked that the English seemed “to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind,”[1] suggesting there was no conscious application of any strategy behind establishing the British Empire. Coming at the height of imperial England’s global presence, the remark sparked a debate that has yet to subside: while many concur with Seeley’s assessment, those who disagree insist that, even if not monolithically planned, the Empire was deliberately created. Examining only the Raj—the Indian part of the Empire—this paper posits a view distinct from both sides of the ‘absentmindedness’ debate yet meeting both.
Tracing how intermittent stimulations attenuated through the milieu of eighteenth-century India—a complex adaptive (social) system[b],[2] of ‘agents’ (kingdoms, non-state players, organisations, interest groups, and influencers)—the paper suggests that the Raj was a sort of ‘emergent behaviour’[3] where only a few agents deliberately thought of it, while most were unaware of it.[c] Extending this examination—based on complexity theory and organisation theory[d]—to the Empire in Africa or elsewhere will yield the same results.
In the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, India experienced two pivotal events: the arrival of Portuguese tall ships on the southern coast in 1498 and the invasion of Babur in 1526, heralding the Mughal Dynasty. The former shook the coastal system as regional littoral vessels, or even the larger, lateen-sailed Yemeni and Ottoman oared galleys, were unable to contend with full-rigged European ships. However, this had only an indirect impact on the inland polity (such as by supplying horses, firearms, or military expertise), whereas Mughal rule-related factors—long expeditions, great battles, demographic shifts—were more determinative.
By the early-eighteenth century, the two realms were in a sort of stasis. Certain theoretical perspectives can help provide a holistic view of this situation. Systems theory, for instance, uses a top-down view to see a structure of interacting, interconnected parts, maintained at equilibrium with negative feedback or balancing loops that correct deviations until positive feedback or reinforcing loops take the system to a new equilibrium. This equilibrium-centric orderliness of systems theory[e] stemmed from the Enlightenment’s reductionist and phenomenological legacy. This orderliness, which had permeated the ‘social sciences,’[f] posited a ‘Clockwork Universe’ where all things, physical and social, were supposed to move exactly as per definable rules,[4] its ontological position being that systems are naturally stable and that change is exceptional. Such determinism, which sees systems as representable by neat block diagrams, causal loop diagrams, and differential equations, discounts the reality of the combinatorial explosion of possibilities that makes the real world stochastic, a realisation that led to complexity theory (as such, a development rather than a counter to systems theory).
Complexity sees equilibrium as unnatural. Taking a bottom-up view, it sees the world as systems of interacting agents, many of which are also parts of other systems, that are perpetually in flux, with even simple rules of interaction causing turbulent nonlinearity and unpredictable patterns of behaviour. Rather than equilibrium, complexity theory sees systems maintaining dynamic steady states near attractors, from which they can be tipped by the continuous flow of impetuses percolating through the system as second- and third-order effects with unintended consequences. In this environment, agents adapt their own and the system’s behaviours, leading to patterns emerging.
This can be illustrated by viewing eighteenth-century coastal and inland India as a seething mass of agents. Insights from organisation theory (still a multidisciplinary field rather than a single, unified theory[g]) help better understand the agents, which are complex adaptive systems, with multivariate structures and behaviour and transmutation rules.
By the early-eighteenth century, the Mughals had irreversibly shifted away from their Central Asian warband structure, and their mansabdāri system had transformed into a protocol network. The government could not control the mansabdār, nor feudal chiefs and local governors; after the death of Bahadur Shah, the government plunged into a pageantry of inept princelings, mostly stooges of competing factions. In the end, the Emperor Shah Alam was actually ousted from the capital by the Turcoman teenager Imad ul-Mulk, who unleashed a reign of terror.
The Mughal provinces of Bengal, Awadh, and Hyderabad had become nearly independent, though maintaining a semblance of Mughal suzerainty in deference to protocol. Awadh, since Safdarjung’s performance against Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1741, had become a refuge for all Irani nobles, resented by their Turani rivals at court, with its capital, Lakhnau, a hub of Shi’ism and Persianate decorum. The Turanis had their counterpart at the Nizamate of Hyderabad, from which the Shia Qutb Shahis had been ousted. Bengal, practically independent since the death of its Mughal governor Shaista Khan, had, after the death of its Turcoman nawab Alivardi Khan, descended into the chaos of fighting daughters and their husbands, till a grandson, Siraj-ud-Dawlah, secured the throne. Much of deltaic Bengal remained rebellious, with a renegade Portuguese, Sebastio Goncalves Tibau, having set up a pirate ‘state’ in the Gangetic estuary.
The steppes around Delhi, peopled by Jat, Mewati, and Gujjar warbands, and the rich agrarian Doaba to their east, were contested by Rohilla settlers with Jats, Sikhs, Bhadauria and Sikarwar Rajputs. The Rohillas, maintaining good relations with their Afghan brethren beyond the Khyber, acted as conduits for the horse trade, and the Sikhs, split into various misls (political-military bands) with fair social and military organisation, acted as a counterpoise to the Afghans. Once Mughal allies, the Rajputana states had grown restive and reverted to their own protocols.
In the south, the astute release of Shahuji, Shivaji’s grandson, who was brought up in Mughal captivity, broke Maratha solidarity into the Kolhapur and Satara factions, leading them to revert to pre-Shivaji ways. The Marathas were dominated by the Gaekwar faction in the west, Holkar and Sindhia in the north, Bhonsla in the east (who had taken Orissa, his cavalry regularly raiding Bengal), and the Peshwa (prime minister) at the centre. Along the upper Kaveri in the south, the Marathas contested with Mahīśūra (Mysore), whose Wodeyar rulers maintained a cavalry corps of Turcoman adventurers for which they would soon pay the price. Between these major realms were tucked many smaller powerholders, such as Bhopal, Kudappah, Kurnool, and Arcot, which were Afghan garrisons guarding the long line of communication to Gingee near Madras, where the Mughals had besieged Shivaji’s second son Rajaram for nearly two decades, that had refused to vacate after the cessation of the war. Groups and influencers with limited territorial possessions, such as nomadic Banjara hauliers who provided logistics services to armies, Deccan and Central Indian tribal communities, rootless bands such as the Pindari relics of demobilised Mughal soldiery, and the akhārās (orders) of warrior ascetics, were other important players.
As a land-based dynasty, the Mughals had little to do with the sea and had outsourced coastal security to African Sidi enslaved people at their outposts, such as Murud–Janjira. They also left the Europeans to themselves, seeing them as ‘maritime nomads’ who brought exotic luxuries and populated uneconomical coastal strips, tolerable as long as they did not threaten the Hajj route. In an unspoken agreement, the French and Portuguese kept the Red Sea free of Yemeni interference, while the English, officially permitted by their government to engage in piracy since 1661, attended to Maratha ships in the western waters. Only the Portuguese, who also contested with the English over the Swally Roads to Surat and Colaba, conflicted with littoral states because of their ‘cultural’ approach, trying to enforce their way of life and religion, and sending missions inland (Jesuit embassies to Agra had all but converted Jahangir[5]).
In contrast, the English and Dutch, whose prolonged rivalry had been suspended since 1688–90 when the Dutch Stadtholder (stead-holder) also became king of England, resorted to patient diplomacy and trade, thereby not alarming the littoral states. After generations of patient lobbying, the English obtained firmans confirming their possessions in Bengal, Bombay, and Madras[h] in 1716 from the court of Farrukh Siyyar. While the French gradually made territorial gains, the Danes and German Ostenders were not significant military powers. Overall, the Europeans remained peripheral on the coast, taking advantage of each war in Europe to improve their relative positions.
The only serious Indian threat was from the Maratha navy, under the control of Kanhoji and Tulaji Angre, who, though hampered by the quality of their ships, contested with the English from 1712. By 1755, the year in which their reputedly impregnable harbour-fortress of Suvarnadurga was raided, Tulaji had fallen out with the Peshwa and was arrested; the ‘Treaty of Poona’ (1756) left the English in a strong position on the coast, from which they tried to exclude Dutch shipping.[6] A highlight of this war was the Maratha capture of HMS Derby in 1735,[7] its holds full of bullion and warlike materiel, along with many civilian passengers, causing an uproar that preceded that over the Black Hole incident by two decades.[8]
The rest of this paper takes the multidisciplinary approach of the Annales school[i],[9] to examine how this seeming equilibrium would repeatedly be upended, leading to the emergence of certain patterns of behaviour. It delves into details only to illustrate organisational and systemic behaviour.
An unexpected stimulus altered the existing system during the First Carnatic War (1744–48), when, against the backdrop of the War of the Austrian Succession, English and French ships began a contest off the Madras coast, much to the resentment of the ruler of Arcot. When the French captured Madras, the nawab, powerless to intervene at sea but confident of his cavalry, responded to English pleas and besieged it. The confidence was first shaken by a small French victory, and then completely shattered a few days later when his large cavalry attacked a body of 230 French and 700 cipayes (sepoys) at San Thomé near Adyar.[10] It was shocked by one, and then another, volley of musket fire, and finally broken by the third. This new type of infantry, drilled to fire three times a minute (or once every 20 seconds), faster than the leisurely ways of regional infantry, shattered the myth of Asiatic cavalry.
The success prompted both the English and the French to back rival sets of claimants to Arcot and Hyderabad, precipitating the Second Carnatic War (1749–55), which saw several audacious marches and countermarches, and battlefield manoeuvres by drilled infantry at Vendalur, Arcot, and Kaveripak. The war left the Tamil country firmly allied with the English and Hyderabad with the French, the latter stationing a corps of elite battalions (the Telingas) under Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau.[11]
Alarmed by these developments, the inexperienced nawab of Bengal attacked Calcutta in 1756; the garrison withdrew downriver after a desultory resistance, leaving many to be subjected to what came to be known as the Black Hole incident. The escapees met with reinforcements from Madras under Admiral Charles Watson of the Royal Navy and Colonel Robert Clive of the Company’s army near the estuary. Soon, the force took Baj-Baj in a sepoy charge, and reaching Calcutta, impressed the nawab so much by a demonstration of steadfastness (discussed later) that he withdrew.
Exploiting the opportunity provided by the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), the English took the French base of Chandernagore north of Calcutta. Then, to get over their fiscal difficulties, they plotted a regime change against the nawab, who was preoccupied with another Afghan threat, defeating him at Plassey in the winter of 1757 and replacing him with Mir Jafar Ali, whose ‘treachery’—he stood aloof with his large force—had marked the desultory battle.
While Plassey was being consolidated, more sepoy engagements occurred in the South. The French besieged Madras but were forced to raise the siege twice—first due to the arrival of the English fleet and subsequently due to reinforcements from Bengal under Eyre Coote. Coote’s sepoys took Masulipatnam, beat the French at Condore, besieged Pondicherry, and broke a charge of French Hussars (the first time European cavalry was used in India) at Wandiwash. De Bussy was captured, and the French barely averted a rout thanks to their resolute Irish infantry. Hyder Ali, a Turcoman cavalry commander who had displaced the Wodeyars at Mysore, failed to relieve Pondicherry, which capitulated in January 1761 on the same days as the battle of Panipat was being fought.
Once the Third Carnatic War (1756–1763) ended with news of peace in Europe, the English returned Masulipatnam, Pondicherry, and Chandernagore, but not before demolishing their defences. They also briefly replaced a resentful Jafar Ali with his son-in-law, Mir Qasim Ali, but reverted when the latter became recalcitrant, tried to raise a modern army, sought better terms for local business, and established an alliance with Awadh and the fugitive Mughal ruler, Shah Alam. The English defeated the alliance in a series of battles culminating at Buxar in 1764, all marked by remarkable sepoy performance, one of the outcomes of which was that the sepoys’ recruiting homeland passed into British hands. French-trained battalions had also continued to perform well against local rulers, winning resounding victories such as at Bobbili (1757) and Udgir (1760) on the Andhra coast.
The view that fails to acknowledge European precedence in drilled infantry overlooks the fact that drill is much more than holding fire to deliver a surprise volley, which they insist was practised by Indian armies too.[12] At San Thomé, the infantry had delivered three volleys in quick succession while moving forward, implying quick reloading by the entire line, and a controlled application of fire and manoeuvring that fire across the battlefield. Such coordinated action with voice, bugle or drum commands, raising warfare above the tumultuous chaos,[j],[13] was observed early in the Roman, then in the Spanish, armies, and in refined forms in the battalions of Cromwell, Nassau, and Adolphus around the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). Perfected by the esprit géométrique (the spirit which saw everything as geometrically regular and precisely measured) of the Enlightenment (from when drill manuals come down to the people), such coordination of all actions (and not firing volleys alone) was demonstrated repeatedly: at Kaveripak, Clive extricated battalions from an ambush and outflanked the attackers; at Condore, the centre battalions wheeled to pour enfiladed fire on the French attacking the left flank; Hussar cavalry was broken by infantry at Wandiwash; and drilled infantry ambushed cavalry in the soon-to-follow battle at Changamah. Such between- and on-battlefield manoeuvring was different from the tabör jangi known in India (and used at Panipat)—a gunline concealed by a screen of horse riders and finished by cavalry action.
What was also new at San Thomé was that the infantry had not fled at the onset of the cavalry but stood its ground, even charging. This implies not only intense training and drilling, but also discipline, cohesion, and sound leadership. At Calcutta in 1756, Clive’s troops missed the nawab’s position in the mist and marched back, firing without breaking under counterfire, impressing the nawab into withdrawing. At Masulipatnam, charging sepoys nearly faltered on discovering what looked like a mine, but then rallied. Such steadfast and cohesive behaviour, infecting the entire line, emerging from training, junior leadership, and the individual actions of each soldier, was unknown to the Indian infantry. It was this—and not musketry or volley fire—that shattered the myth of Asiatic cavalry, triggering a cascade of reinforcing loops.
Infantries like the sepoys had not appeared in India, where the elite, who took an interest in and owned high-quality matchlocks and flintlocks, preferred cavalry.[k],[14] The mass production of firearms was not supported: while the expensive dobara-qabasha or qalami saltpetre, which were clarified in a complex process involving copper and brass decanters, was used by the elite alone, the soldiery used powder produced as a cottage industry using primitive techniques. Variety in musket design and inconsistency in powder quality ruled out a standard drill, unlike standardised European weapons[l] and milled powder (which provided consistent propulsion), enabling drills and field repairs due to the interchangeability of parts.
Also, many recruits were not amenable to drill—those from socially disadvantaged classes, though good as skirmishers and scouts, lacked stability for prolonged training, while those from dominant communities preferred individualistic fighting styles and did not submit to harsh training. With the monopoly over infantry supplies of the great colonel–commandant families of Orchha, Datiya, Chanderi, and Raisen broken in the early Mughal period, recruits were brought by smaller jobber–commanders. There was no strong class that could enforce training or discipline, even if these skills existed. Consequently, Indian armies were full of swaggering sworders with a few modest musketeers, and the tightly drilled, pipe-clayed, almost dehumanised infantry of Europe never appeared in them. Of the Mughal battalions, only the sabit khani battalions were somewhat associated with regular uniforms and drilling. A similar atmosphere permeated the use of artillery—though many kings had large parks, quality varied with little standardisation, and undrilled crews seldom displayed urgency in firing.
While all European outstations hired local peons and guards, since 1680, North Indian names were seen in the Madras payrolls and Hindustani was the official language in the Teliṅga battalions in Hyderabad, indicating that they were also tapping into the long-distance soldiering tradition of the east, i.e., Bihar and Awadh. The French were the first to realise that these auxiliaries were amenable to drill. After San Thomé, their model was replicated in all East India Company (EIC) stations. The English, keen for men to look good on parade, eschewed the humble Deccan folk with their uncomplicated barrack-room procedures and shifted recruitment to the easterner despite their obsessive rules and endless taboos. The process was formalised by the mid-1750s, by which time ranks were awarded based on the number of recruits brought (havildār for 10, jemadār/jemait-dār or platoon commander for 25). By the late 1760s, seven to eight companies, of two to four platoons each and commanded by a subedar, were grouped into battalions with small English staffs—two captains, two subalterns, and three sergeant-majors, all seconded from English battalions—for operational command and drill; the subedar-major, i.e., senior subedar, colloquially ‘black commandant’, nearly commanded the battalion.
Once victory over Qasim Ali brought the Purabiya–recruiting heartland of Buxar into English control, local youth, largely from dominant communities, joined the EIC despite its harsh discipline style (including flogging and execution) due to its reputation for good administration, good food, regular leave, and a focus on individual welfare. Community insurance, pensions, and the prospect of a comfortable retirement with jāhgirs in ‘invalid thanahs’[m],[15] made the EIC dominate the competitive recruiting market in Buxar as well as in friendly Awadh just across the frontier. Competition from regional recruiters such as Chait Singh of Banaras, who employed ‘English’ motifs like adventure and regular pay, was eased out, and the battalions rapidly became supra-personal institutions.
The French were badly mauled, while the Dutch, incited into attacking the English by Jafar Ali, were defeated at Biderrah near Calcutta and forced to shift focus to Indo-China; by the mid-1760s, the EIC controlled vast stretches of inland territory. Now First Baron of Plassey, Clive was also mansabdār Sabut Jung,[n] with the 24-Parganas around Calcutta as his jāhgir, making him the EIC’s landlord. After Buxar, Shah Alam, in return for residence in Allahabad, a substantial pension, and two districts taken from Awadh, also gave away the provinces of Orissa, Bihar, and Bengal to the English via the ‘Treaty of Allahabad’ (1765).
According to systems theory, this situation can be viewed as an equilibrium, maintained by dampening influences: the English, prioritising trade over military ardour, were reluctant to take over local administration and accepted a ‘subsidiary’ position. Under a dual system, they took on minimal roles, leaving all administrative work to the existing governments. However, the situation was not static and contained impetus for further change both from within and outside the system. One impetus was the faltering of the sepoy reputation. However, it was initially reinforced during the First Mysore War (1767–69), when Hyder Ali attacked Madras but was defeated in several running battles, including the ambush at Changamah.
In 1773, the EIC elevated Warren Hastings, governor of Calcutta, to Governor General, giving Bengal priority over the other two presidencies. Almost concurrently, the astute Mahadji Sindhia restored Shah Alam at Delhi and took over as his regent, obtaining the two districts that the English had allotted to the latter. As part of the province of Awadh, these districts technically already belonged to the Mughals, but they had no hold over them. This notional hold is most notable in the handing over of Orissa to the English in the last treaty—though a Mughal province, it was under the control of the Bhonsla and giving it away was only a façade of Mughal suzerainty similar to the assignment of territory already held by the Rohilla as their jāhgir a generation ago.
Shah Alam’s pivot to the Marathas enabled Hastings to withdraw from the dual system and become more involved in local administration. Soon, Hastings had convinced the Maratha chiefs to station regiments at their expense (akin to Maratha muluk-giri, in which forces were placed in another state at that state’s expense, on threat of looting, though without looting), surrounding Poona in a diplomatic ring fence. The Marathas retaliated by seeking a triple alliance with Hyder Ali and the Nizam, all three of whom were already hobnobbing with the French. These calculations were upended in 1774 when, envious of Madras and Calcutta’s affluence, Bombay opened communications with the usurper Peshwa Raghunath Rao (Raghoba).
After getting Raghoba to confirm possession of Salsette and Bassein, Bombay dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Keating with a column to Poona to assist him against Nana Phadnis, leader of the group loyal to his assassinated predecessor Narayana-Rao. Fearing that Nana Phadnis would attack Madras, Hastings ordered Bombay to abandon Raghoba and recall Keating. But then, learning that Nana Phadnis was negotiating with the French and had accepted a consignment of arms and warlike materiel from them, ordered Bombay to continue the operations, dispatching another column from Awadh to assist it. In the confusion, accentuated by the time it took for orders to travel, the English were defeated in a series of battles later known as the First Maratha Wars (1775–82), and were obliged to give up Raghoba’s cause through the ‘Treaty of Salbai’ and the ‘Wadgaon Convention’.
Though the English reputation plummeted, it was not bleak, as they had learnt to coordinate the operations of presidency armies separated by hundreds of miles, had successfully ignored regional sovereignty by traversing kingdoms without seeking permission, and had captured the reputedly ‘impregnable’ fortress of Gwalior in a direct assault. The most important consequence of Salbai and Wadgaon was that they guaranteed Maratha neutrality, allowing the English the freedom to deal with Mysore.
The sepoy humiliation was heightened during the highly mobile Second Mysore War (1780–84), which was unleashed when Hyder Ali, having allied with Poona and Hyderabad, descended upon the Carnatic with his son, Tipu. Light and speedy Mysore columns besieged several positions, and outmanoeuvred and defeated several EIC columns, taking many prisoners. Despite a column from Bombay nearly reaching Mysore via Mangalore, a Wodeyar plot that included English prisoners in Seringapatam, and Hyder’s sudden demise from a herpes attack, Tipu emerged victorious thanks to his mobile columns, sustained by formidable logistics.
The operations ceased when the French, who had joined Tipu outside Mangalore, marched away on receiving news of the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783. Notwithstanding some sterling sepoy performances, the reputation of the EIC army and many generals were left in ruins.
The other impetus was external, as the system was never a neatly closed system. EIC traders and soldiers, mostly middle-class men who had suddenly grown immeasurably rich and were mocked as nabobs after the Indian nawab by the English old money, were feared to disrupt the English social fabric and were sought to be reined in. This demand was reinforced by strong public participation, (often pretended) sense of fairness in society, resentment of strong central authority, and demand for scrutiny of colonial affairs, leading to Clive and Hastings being called to account for faults that were not necessarily theirs. Clive died a broken man, and the attempt to impeach Hastings on charges of avarice, luxuriousness, despotism, mismanaging famines, and other crimes (including the Carnatic debacle) would cost him his reputation and health.
The social outburst, reinforced by the political class’s discomfort with Hastings’s closeness to Indian rulers in light of developments in the United States (US) and France, triggered legislation to rein in overseas possessions. Hastings was sought to be replaced with the indecisive and malleable MacCartney, the governor of Madras, while the ‘Pitt’s India Act’ of 1784 (and its corollaries) began curtailing colonial autonomy, reducing the EIC’s commercial role and privileges, and inducting greater Crown supervision through the appointment of representatives, which the EIC had resisted until then. Important positions such as that of the governor general, so far held by EIC men who grew through service, were now given to ambitious members of the lesser nobility.
Charles Cornwallis, the First Marquess Cornwallis, the first non-Company man to be governor general (in an opportunity to restore his reputation, which had suffered in the US), was soon followed by Richard Wellesley, an ambitious member of the junior nobility of Irish Protestant extraction. Their ambitions heightened involvement with administration, with the unintended consequence of precipitating expansions.
When Cornwallis opened the Mysore front in 1790, Tipu, while trying to prohibit the columns converging on Seringapatam, also tried to get Pondicherry to attack the English rear. Cornwallis captured Bangalore and reached Mysore, but his situation had grown precarious with the approaching monsoons, while all his lines of communication had been cut by Tipu’s Baida forester (who knew all the byways and ambushed all dispatch riders). Unaware that the Bombay column was only 45 miles to his west, he gave orders to destroy the siege train and withdraw to Bangalore.
Returning in winter, Cornwallis besieged and attacked the strong island fort of Seringapatam. However, far from the widely desired Wodeyar restoration, Cornwallis accepted Tipu’s offer of a ceasefire while on the verge of victory and withdrew, retaining Tipu on mild terms as a counterpoise to the Marathas. All prisoners, however, were rescued.
Tipu, who had assumed sovereignty after the Second Mysore War, had raised an army of drilled infantry with the help of French officers. However, it was hampered by poor ordnance, frequent organisational changes, and the replacement of familiar French and English words of command with archaic Persian ones.[o] Though capable of wanton cruelty, Tipu also displayed noble behaviour, such as permitting the stalwart defenders of Mangalore to march away unharmed. However, his geostrategic comprehension was inadequate for a man of his stature. Not only did he pester the French to fight the English at times when they were not already at war, but he also believed his French allies when they said that Napoleon was about to come to his aid. Calling himself citoyen (citizen) Tipu after the French Revolution, he even approached the governor of Mauritius to be his conduit to the emperor, and was embarrassed when this information leaked, since he had recently endorsed the Ottoman Sultan Selim III’s condemnation of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. The French, organised as a Company but, in reality, a royal venture shorn of royal interest, were extremely unsure of themselves as the Revolution broke out.
Operations resumed in 1799 by Wellesley, by which time several organisational changes had been made by Cornwallis (see under Reforms and Readjustments). Successfully outmanoeuvring Tipu, several columns converged on Seringapatam, where they were joined by another column under Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the younger brother of the governor general, comprising 60,000 buffaloes organised by tapping into the traditional haulier network. This was an adaptation that brought the English, hitherto always out of supply, at par with Tipu’s proverbial logistics.
The well-defended island-fort of Seringapatam on the western half of an elongated island on the Cauvery was besieged from the west, where the ground was higher. Pushing pickets and batteries onto the stony riverbed, the younger Wellesley launched the assault in the afternoon, catching the garrison by surprise. Assaulting units crossed the moat under heavy fire, using a plank allegedly left by agents, and gained the gate. Tipu rushed to the walls where he was shot. After giving him a military funeral complete with a muted band and a gun salute, the English restored the Wodeyar and appointed Purneah Pundit, a trusted advisor to Hyder and Tipu, as governor.
With the resistance in the Deccan ending in 1799, the treaties of Salbai and Wadgaon had served their purpose, and Wellesley could turn to the Marathas. Though strong in Delhi, Maratha solidarity had evaporated with the passing of the farsighted Mahadji Sindhia in 1795, the year they would fight together for the last time under the Peshwa. Their enemy, the Nizam, was saved by timely British intervention and fell into the EIC’s lap, dismissing his French officers, such as Michel Joachim Marie Raymond. The Marathas received another blow when Nana Phadnis passed in 1800.
Wellesley now tried to persuade Peshwa Baji Rao II to accept terms similar to those enforced on the Nizam, engineering a standoff with his chief. As the incensed Yashwant Rao Holkar and Daulat Rao Sindhia descended upon Pune in 1802, the Peshwa moved to Bombay, where he signed the ‘Treaty of Bassein’, which superseded the ‘Treaty of Salbai’. Wellesley ordered Bombay to restore Baji Rao II at Pune, his brother Arthur, now acting Major General and governor of Mysore, to move north, and Gerard Lake, the commander-in-chief, to march to Delhi from the east. As these armies converged, the Marathas faced betrayal on two fronts, the first being from the many European commanders in their armies.
Starting with Portuguese renegades and other independent adventurers, Europeans had been in Indian employ as experts in artillery and siege-craft, and then in drilled infantry.[16] Many such expatriate professionals commanded or staffed Maratha infantries, artillery units, and foundries, usually as jāhgirdārs; while mostly French, there were many Englishmen, a few of whom had been executed by Holkar. With war approaching in mid-1801, the EIC issued an ordinance in the name of the Crown recalling all Englishmen serving in regional armies to English territory and inviting any other Europeans who wished to do so, precipitating an exodus of expatriate professionals who left with troops, guns, and volumes of intelligence. The atmosphere was so rife with distrust that even those who wanted to stay were sent away, while Sindhia even suspected his commander-in-chief; Frenchmen mostly remained.
The departure was a ‘betrayal’ in a limited sense; it was naivety on the part of the Maratha to expect Englishmen to fight Englishmen for their benefit as easily as they fought one another for the benefit of Delhi or Bijapur. Daulat Rao Sindhia responded to the exodus by hastily promoting Maratha officers, but with little experience in actual command of field formations, they could do little when the conduct of war suddenly devolved upon them, except to fight with bravery. The second betrayal Sindhia faced was by the many akhārās of warrior ascetics or sanyāsis (ascetics), a martial tradition that patron kings tapped into.
Though their combat was usually hallucinogen-induced frenzies, and they often switched sides,[p] sanyāsis were capable of pitched battle and fortress defence, and had an immense logistic reach due to their long-distance trade networks.
As war approached, Sindhia sent out circulars to still-independent rulers to join his alliance; most demurred, while none of the sanyāsi akhārās responded, perhaps foreseeing eventual English success.[q] As the columns converged, Perron held a line east of Aligarh against Lake, hoping for a Bhonsla attack on Lake’s flank from the south. However, Anup Giri (better known as Himmat Bahadur), who controlled Bundelkhand, blocked the route.[17]
After several victories (such as at Kalpi, Buland-Shahar, and Agra) and the defeat of Major Bourquin’s forces, Lake entered Delhi and had an audience with the emperor in September 1803. After a gallant final resistance under Ambaji Ingle at Laswari, a little west of Delhi, the Marathas made an orderly withdrawal when out of ammunition. Meanwhile, in the south, Wellesley had fought his way to Poona and met a combined Sindhia and Bhosla army at Assaye, across an unassailable position on the steep, stony banks north of a river. Wellesley outflanked the defenders.[18] Soon, Bhonsla bases at Aragam and Gawilgarh were taken, while other columns took Baroda and Asirgarh, opening the way to the north.
Meanwhile, Lake had taken Dīg and besieging the Jat fortress of Bharatpur, sent a column south under Lieutnenat Colonel William Monson. Monson withdrew, mauled by Holkar’s cavalry near Kota, as Wellesley neared Ujjain, and the linkup could not take place yet. Also, the mud fortress of Bharatpur, into whose walls shots sank harmlessly, held out as hundreds of sepoys were killed in four unsuccessful assaults.
With the EIC losing much of its commercial role and large parts of the mainland eventually coming under English control, English involvement in administration increased, particularly in matters of revenue, irrigation, survey, and magistracy. The developments, though triggered by Cornwallis’s and Wellesley’s ambitions, were not centrally planned or directed, but brought about by elements operating on corrective feedback and bounded authority. For example, the failed Permanent Settlement of 1793, with which Cornwallis had hoped to replicate the improving gentleman-farmer of England in Bengal and increase productivity and revenue by granting large zamindaris, had been hijacked by rack-renters and absentee farmers with little interest in farming, causing the EIC to try more direct arrangements with farmers in other domains, such as the ryotwari in Madras where settlements were made with individual farmers, thereby getting deeper into assessment and administration.
The assault on sepoy reputation through the wars with Mysore and the Marathas should be seen in the backdrop of the esprit géométrique of small, highly trained Enlightenment-era armies of professionals who were obsessed with the utopias of precision[r] being superseded by enormous and impassioned armies of new-age nations triggered by the Napoleonic wars. While the Mysore or Maratha armies were not animated by the same ‘nationalism’, they were socially impassioned and had been introduced to newer manners of war by their European officers. Cornwallis’s other reforms of 1796 sought to address these changes by reinforcing the regimental system and making battalions more stable, including by increasing the number of officers in battalions.
Increased stability in the regiments enabled training comparable to the proverbial ‘thin red line’ (English battalions, in two ranks, could generate volleys of fire equal to denser formations), while the charismatic young officers became the Company’s face for the sepoys. Officers and men spent large amounts of time together, training, camping, and hunting, often striking lifelong friendships, and together bringing about spectacular victories, in contrast to French-trained cipaye battalions, where the involvement of Frenchmen at junior levels was minimal and, consequently, concern for men was low, discipline lax, and training suboptimal. The effects were visible as, despite the reversals of the Second Mysore and First Maratha Wars, sepoy battalions had often performed well individually.
However, increasing the number of English officers also had the negative effect of leaving Indian officers with far less to do and, thus, making them feel less important.
The greater involvement in administration soon triggered the Nepal wars, brought about when a survey of the Terai north of Awadh and the Ceded and Conquered Province (annexed by Hastings after the Rohilla War of 1774) was resented by Kathmandu. In 1814, the Governor General Francis Rawdon, Lord Moirasent four columns into Nepal while the Raja of Sikkim attacked from the east. Of the four, the three eastern columns (from Patna, Gorakhpur, and Saharanpur) ran into difficulties immediately—their sepoys, used to fighting close-order battles in open terrain, lacked training and junior leadership to fight in small, isolated groups in the broken, misty mountains.
In contrast, the fourth column (from Ludhiana) under Sir David Ochterloney was Rohilla, exactly the men who were good at skirmishing and isolated combat. Fighting several battles successfully, Ochterloney reached the outskirts of Kathmandu; when the Nepalese government, all but defeated, demurred to sign an appropriate treaty, the war was renewed, and the Nepalese army was defeated outside Kathmandu in 1815.
The war enabled the EIC to break into the Gorkha, Garhwali, and Kumaoni recruiting networks, easily co-opted into the regimental system. Their territory now marched with the pastoral realms and scrublands of the Indo–Gangetic Divide, cavalry country overrun by bandits, raiders, demobilised soldiers, or Pindari. The need for cavalry had been increasing over the years as the frontier neared this region—eschewing its original policy of making do with locally borrowed cavalry to supplement the few English light cavalry regiments, the Company had been experimenting with Dragoons and Hussars (raised out of Eastern European troops), raising the picturesquely named Mogul Horse, and introducing a light, horse-drawn two-pounder or Galloper Guns. Also, dissatisfied with the short Turki and Chatgosha local horses (too small for large English and Irish riders), it had commenced breeding ventures. Adventurous horse-enthusiasts like William Moorcroft made forays into Central Asia to establish a route for obtaining horses.[19]
At the frontier, the EIC demonstrated remarkable adaptability by adopting a variant of the mansabdār format to harness its warlike populations. It granted jāhgirs to willing English, Irish, and Scottish volunteer officers, such as Skinner and William Linnæus Gardner, to settle Jat, Gujjar, and Mewati pastoralists around Delhi, and Rajput and Maratha subsistence farmers in Central India, on condition that they provided one sowar (rider) per plot. Two features distinguished these near-private ‘irregular regiments’: one, confirmation from the jāhgir assuring land occupation as long as a family provided one sowar, making jointly held land the foundation of esprit de corps;[s] and two, the centralised provision of horse and equipment, funded out of monthly stoppages from pay, precluding the assortment of weapons and horses as was the norm. Thus, even without direct relations with troopers, the ‘irregulars’ were like regular regiments—multi-generation affiliation, standardised mount and equipment, training and drilling on the lines of regular regiments, and formalised command structure. Drilled with trumpet and field signals, these irregulars could drive regional adversaries into disarray just as well as the regulars.
At the same time, despite being from frugal nomadic stock, often having been freebooters or raiders till recently, the irregulars were quick and full of initiative. Mostly located in newly conquered territories where the administrative machinery had not yet reached, the irregulars were co-opted into fighting banditry and maintaining peace, which they did with extra zeal, as peace meant retaining arable land and social mobility. The success of this auxiliary format would soon be replicated along the northwest frontier and elsewhere.
The Third Maratha War was precipitated by administrative demands for security in a countryside dominated by predatory bands of highway robbers and other bandits. The English policy of checking these raids by getting their ally, the Peshwa, to retain them on a subsidy did not work well.[20] Suspecting Holkar, the last standing Maratha chief who insisted on collecting protection tax (of one-fourth of the collected revenue) up to Delhi, of encouraging the Pindaris and hoping to catch him out, the Company issued ultimatums to him and other rulers in 1816 to join them in the impending operations against the Pindaris. Hostilities intensified when irregular cavalries started pursuing Pindari gangs into their territories, which they took as affronts to their sovereignty. EIC residencies and garrisons were attacked in the resulting standoff. The Poona garrison held out at Kirkee, while the Nagpore did so at Seetabuldee Hill behind the residency, saved by the arrival of Captain Charles Fitzgerald’s 6th Bengal Cavalry. In December, Holkar was defeated at Mahidpur, and on the New Year’s night, a small column of sepoys, recruited from socially underprivileged classes, defeated a strong Peshwa attack at Koregaon. A highlight of this war was the taking of Bharatpur by the same battalion that had been beaten back in the last war, a story of multi-generational regimental cohesion.
At the end of the war, the office of Peshwa was abolished, and many junior princes were installed, including a descendant of Shivaji at Satara. The EIC territory was extended up to the Sutlej; the cis-Sutlej was signed away by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the ‘Treaty of Amritsar’ in 1809. Most Indian courts, with residents to oversee their external relations, remained under threat of takeover unless their administration was to English liking. Peace prevailed for nearly three decades, until new wars in the north destabilised it.
However, the situation concealed enormous stochasticity, anchoring the Raj in what complexity theory calls an ‘attractor basin’.[t],[21] Also, the palette of agents had transformed—most of the old ones were replaced by newer elements. The French, defeated not only in India but also in Europe (1815), had little bite. The EIC, beset by clamour in England for freer trade, less (but actually more) government, and religious improvement, had been whittled away till only vestigial monopoly in opium and tea remained, becoming a front government. It was marked by administrative hyperactivity of its various departments—survey, land revenue, irrigation, education—which were almost distinct agents, their members demanding order in the countryside so that they could do their tasks conscientiously and advance professionally. This, in turn, provided military men and law-enforcers with an opportunity to do their jobs and advance professionally, creating a potent mix of Pax Britannica.
Many unintended consequences emerged from this situation. For example, surveys, mapping, and volumes of insightful gazetteers emerged from a thirst for geographical or anthropological knowledge, the desire to increase revenue collection, improve traditionally arbitrary administration, and better execute military operations, and from ‘agents’ only seeking the satisfaction of doing their jobs honestly and efficiently and attain professional recognition, and not always wealth, power, or imperial expansion. Often, they were subconsciously trying new administrative techniques before implementing them in England.
At the same time, hardened racial feelings in Anglo–Indian society[u] mixed with a humane (but often misplaced) desire to reduce perceived social ills and an increasingly evangelical attitude to convert and ‘educate’ heathens. After years of lobbying, especially by the Clapham Sect, missionaries were allowed in India from 1813. These pressures led to the Charter Act of 1833, which abolished the EIC’s commercial role and recognised the whole of India as a single entity by authorising the governor-general to make laws applicable to all three presidencies. This was reinforced by administrative orders in 1835 that abolished internal customs, introduced standard coinage, and made English the language of official correspondence. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Penal Code was applied across India, though it remained in draft form till 1860.
A universalism born of racial arrogance led to the old policy (since Hastings) of administering using Indian laws, and to education being eschewed, as per Macaulay’s recommendations that European education was necessary for the immediate tasks of administration. Such influences and demands often stemmed from the British public, which ignored the practical voice of the more experienced ‘India hands’ away in India. They promoted Lord William Bentinck, appointed governor general, as a chance to restore his reputation, which had been sullied by his inept handling of the 1806 Vellore Mutiny, and he made significant interventions. The legitimacy of the Raj was reinforced by the acceptance of order by the Indian countryside, which had not known good administration for a long time, as long as sociocultural practices were untouched, as well as by a class of ‘educated’ Indians, now strengthened by Macaulay’s recommendations, clamouring for intervention in many of these same practices. In time, both elements would transform into powerful agents against the Raj.
While the decades of peace provided professional opportunities to administrators and law-enforcers, they left military officers fretting. They desired professional recognition, promotion, decorations, or at least a simple desire to do a job well. The officers in the Madras and Bombay armies had little to do since the fall of Mysore and the Second Maratha War, just as the officers of the Bengal army after the Holkar war. These officers, and the more ambitious government men such as George Eden, First Earl of Auckland who was Governor General from 1836–42, seized upon Russian explorations of their Siberian and Central Asian hinterlands as a bogey to clamour for action, just as the French bogey was used to build narratives against Tipu and the Marathas a generation ago.
This bogey of a supposed Russian invasion through Afghanistan generated ‘reinforcing loops’, resulting in the Afghan wars. Later chapters of the Great Game resulted in the creation of new fields—Punjab, Gilgit–Baltistan, Ladakh, Tibet, and even Sikkim. Auckland decided to install Shah Shuja, the recently ousted Abdali ruler, as his man in Kabul in 1839, triggering two Afghan wars marked by a disastrous mix of arrogance and ignorance. Notwithstanding their geographical and anthropological knowledge, the English extended beyond their logistical tether,[v] and scandalised the puritan Afghans by taking their families to Kabul and disporting themselves with gaiety and abandon. Their policy of reducing the protection money to Shinwari and other Pashtun chiefs, and helping Shuja bypass Pashtun warlords to raise drilled infantry out of the non-Pashtun Hazaras and Tajiks, precipitated disastrous routes, withdrawals, and massacres since the winter of 1841.
Though the hastily put-together relieving expedition rescued several garrisons with such brutality that it was called ‘army of retribution’, the campaign was overall marked by selfishness, indecisiveness, pettiness, and cowardice on the part of senior officers, many of whom had sacrificed others for their own safety. The sepoys, their caste rules already affronted, were repeatedly betrayed by their officers who sought to protect only themselves and the women, leaving them to be butchered. Auckland reportedly suffered a stroke, and a scapegoat was found in Alexander Burnes, already lynched in Kabul, who had at great risk mapped and written glowing accounts of the country.
In 1839, the year he passed away, Maharaja Ranjit Singh had disallowed passage to the Kabul expedition, forcing it to march through Sindh, much to the chagrin of the Balochi nawabs. After the war, the English were drawn into the internal feuds of Sindh’s Talpur nawabs, resulting in two severely fought battles at Meanee and Dubba (1843). These wasteful victories affronted the English conscience into expressing its disapproval through a cartoon in Punch, a weekly magazine, wherein Charles Napier, the hero of the Opium Wars (1839–42) and who had been brought out of retirement for the campaign, strode across a devastated battlefield exclaiming Peccavi (Latin for ‘I have sinned’).
At his passing, Ranjit Singh had left behind a modern, well-drilled army with strong discipline (based on English laws), whose European officers had never been allowed to grow too powerful. However, the Akāli and Nihang elite of the Khalsa soon grew ungovernable, forming a military mobocracy that did as it pleased. There are indications of English preparations for war, possibly suspecting Russian involvement in Punjab, but it is likely that Lal Singh and Tej Singh, the regent and commander-in-chief, respectively, of the boy king Duleep, deliberately pushed the Khalsa into conflict to rein it in. The Khalsa was, in any case, spoiling for a fight.
In December 1845, the Khalsa crossed the Sutlej and besieged Ferozepur, and the English responded by calling out the ‘army of the Sutlej’ under Sir Hugh Gough. Intense battles marked the two Punjab wars that followed, often involving reckless assaults immediately on contact, without artillery preparation. One exception was Aliwal in the first war, where General Sir Harry Smith displayed exceptional generalship and the ability to control fluid situations, enabling him to conduct an orderly battle. After Sobraon, called the ‘Waterloo of India’, ended the first war, the English, unwilling to take over administration, installed a resident and inducted commissioners into the hinterland, starting another phase of irregular and ‘guide’ regiments of foot and horse. They also made the fatal error of inserting young officers as commissars into the Khalsa, which was retained as a counterpoise to the Afghans. This was blasphemy—the Khalsa had near-religious significance, and the Sikhs could not bear to see their venerated regiments ordered about by mere boys. Punjab simmered in disgust at the end of the First Anglo–Sikh War (1845–46).
The disgust precipitated the Second Anglo–Sikh War (1848–49) when the governor of Multan executed two young English officers with Khalsa battalions, but not before they alerted Lieutenant Herbert Edwardes, the political agent of Bannu. While Edwardes fought through Sikh positions on the Chenab to besiege Multan, other Sikh forts were in revolt, and Sher Singh Attariwala reoccupied Lahore.
Gough’s ‘army of the Punjab’ took the bridgehead at Ramnagar in a series of running battles and met Sher Singh at Chillianwala; he attacked immediately in the foggy dusk, but unlike his earlier charges, this one faltered, turning into a near rout. Failing to entice Gough into attacking again, Sher Singh moved off towards Gujarat to link up with his father, Chhattar Singh, and his ally, Akram Khan, son of Dost Mohammed of Kabul, who had already assassinated the English protégé, Shah Shuja, in a mock ambush. Uncharacteristically, Gough waited for reinforcements before following the Khalsa.
The battle, marked by masterful cooperation between English and sepoy infantry, cavalry, and horse artillery, ended the war. Chhattar Singh signed away the kingdom, Duleep was pensioned off to penury in France, and Dost Mohammed recognised English possessions up to Peshawar, though they controlled up to the Khyber. The Sikh wars were marked by reckless bravery on both sides. Also, English cavalries, several of which had been raised after the EIC was forced to look beyond pecuniary reservations after Seetabuldee, fought the fearsome Sikh Ghorchurha light horse with elan. Though after the war they starched their lance pennants in tribute to the encrusted blood, most combat had been with sabres and kirpans whose swings were less easy to dodge than the thrust of a lance; consequently, decapitation had been common, and veterans bore ghastly injuries.
All officers, including senior ones, also behaved splendidly; one of the few exceptions being Alexander Pope, whose wavering led to the debacle of Chillianwala.[w] Even Gough, chastened by news that the EIC had ordered Napier to replace him after being fed up with his costly charges, acted wisely after Chillianwala, especially at the battle of Gujarat.[x]
Returning to the question of whether the Raj was really a fluke of absentmindedness or deliberately planned, we see the system, seldom at stasis but always agitated by stochasticity, ratcheted on by several cycles of disruption. While the initial stimulus of sepoy-based victories propelled the EIC to reluctantly take on revenue administration, subsequent stimuli—by the ambitions of Cornwallis or Wellesley; the racial, evangelist, and reformist eagerness in English society; the periodically outraged print media going into overdrive over the incidents of HMS Derby or the Black Hole and writing books to villainise Indian rulers such as Tipu[22]—transformed the Company into a front of government, and its possessions into the Raj.
That the English proved best able to manipulate the systemic instabilities and adapt is seen in their regimental system, irregular cavalries, and in the improved coordination between the presidency armies[y] via the Cornwallis Reforms. While the presidencies regularly reinforced each other’s operations, the French could barely coordinate their forces—De Bussy always was just about to arrive with reinforcements, but seldom did. Thus, though the Dutch pioneered the Company format, and the French pioneered drilling Indian auxiliaries, the colonial experience of India is dominated by the English.
Seldom acknowledging regional sovereignty and, after 1835, treating India as a single institutionalised entity, the English introduced the idea of ‘civic inheritance’ into Indian administration.[23] This essentially contrasted with the Indian system, where loyalties were personal to kings, whose realms were alliance networks that could easily disintegrate at death. This explains the inability of Indian rulers to understand why Pierre Benoît Dumas handed over his office of mansabdār to Joseph François Dupleix on returning home, why the Peshwa could not entice De Bussy to defect, or why Jafar Ali, a warlord acting in his own capacity, would not throw away his personal army for useless causes. Even the Marathas, who at that time were the only community socio-economically capable of taking a lead, could neither internalise modern war techniques (always outsourcing them) nor comprehend the institutionalised nature of world politics.
While, in principle, not a state but a commercial venture, the EIC, as a state front, introduced the concepts of civic inheritance and Westphalian sovereignty in the realms it controlled. It provided immense professional opportunities for administrators and law-enforcers, mostly young men from public schools in England, whose actions maintained the stability, legitimacy, and popularity of the Raj in an attractor basin. Thus, while the Raj was neither unanimously intended nor centrally planned, but emerged, it was not so extreme an emergence as to warrant calling it a result of absentmindedness.
As the Raj, in an attractor basin, continued to agitate, it appears to have generated an internal stimulation, this time from within the army that was officered by the same class of ambitious men, resulting in the next phase of war starting in Afghanistan (wars beyond—Persia, Burma, China—were pushed more by administrators). The proverbial adaptiveness faltered after Afghanistan: the regimental system, though able to co-opt newer recruiting networks, broke cohesion in the old ones due to endless transfers and unit renumbering. The old bonhomie between officers and men evaporated due to the rearrangements, evangelism, and racial feelings hardening over time—a generation ago, it had become impossible for Skinner, a half-Scot, to get a commission, so he raised an irregular regiment instead.[z] With the Suez overland route and steamships, transit time was reduced, and newer officers became less connected with Indian society due to increased female presence and the opportunity to go home on leave more often.
The sepoys themselves, embarrassed in Nepal, angry about Burma, and badly treated in Afghanistan, felt cheated by the new bonhomie between the English and the Sikhs, whom they had recently fought so gallantly. Their angst, the disappointment of Indian officers progressively sidelined since the Cornwallis Reforms of 1796, the anxiety of minor nobilities of recruiting areas whose hold over the countryside was threatened by agrarian reforms, and the apprehensions of local societies threatened by evangelism were triggered by an ill-conceived introduction of a new kind of ammunition, found objectionable by everyone in the army, precipitating the showdown of 1857.
The uprising of 1857, not limited to sepoys alone, was an emergent behaviour, but less unpredictable than the Raj itself. By the time it was contained after a year of uncoordinated fighting, the system had transformed again. The English crown assumed direct responsibility, evangelism was contained, recruitment moved away from sepoys using the ‘martial race’ construct, and the ‘educated reformers’ were sidelined in favour of the traditional elite. This situation would hold for several decades as a new complex attractor.[24] It was under these conditions that Seeley had made the remark at the root of this paper.
From the vantage provided by complexity and organisation theory, Seeley’s statement can be reframed: the Raj was certainly not centrally directed or planned but grown out of cycles of reinforcing loops within a complex adaptive system at multiple levels; while only some agents in the system consciously desired an empire, the actions of many other, boundedly rational agents undertaken with entirely different intents, had unintended consequences that sustained the Raj. Once in place, however, most agents on the English side sought to maintain it, while others, such as the ‘educated middle class’, intellectual successors of the now-sidelined reformers, gradually turned away. Feeling unrepaid for its loyalty, it gradually grew strong enough to govern and demanded independence. They would soon be joined by other agents demanding independence, but corrective feedback would maintain the attractor basin until reinforcing loops from global events such as the world wars destabilised the system again.
The history outlined above was not deterministic, and different agent behaviours, and their unintended consequences, could easily have ratcheted the system onto other trajectories.
Saikat Bose is an infantry officer with deep interest in history, including history of warfare and religions, and also wargaming and combat modelling.
All views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author, and do not represent the Observer Research Foundation, either in its entirety or its officials and personnel.
[a] Highly trained and disciplined soldiers who could execute standardised movements, formations, and volleys with precision under command of voice, bugles, and drum. Their battlefield effectiveness derived less from individual initiative and accuracy of fire, than from collective cohesion, repetitive drill, and ability to manoeuvre and fire volleys as synchronised units.
[b] According to complexity theory, systems are characterised by components whose interactions are primarily non-linear, i.e., where small changes can have disproportionately large and unpredictable effects. Systems that learn and adapt over time in response to their environment, often exhibiting emergent properties and behaviours that were not present in their individual components, are called complex adaptive systems. Complex adaptive social systems, such as urbanities, financial markets, and social media groups, demonstrate how interactions among many individuals, each with independent objectives and desires that are not necessarily rational, spontaneously lead to complex, unpredictable, and often self-organising collective behaviours.
[c] Complex systems tend to self-organise, their parts often arranging themselves into local equilibria spontaneously and without external centralised control. These arrangements can be easily disturbed again.
[d] The multidisciplinary field of organisation theory examines the structure, functioning, behaviour, and dynamics of organisations. Having evolved from early approaches that tended to view hierarchical organisations as formal systems, organisation theory increasingly views organisations as open systems of interconnected subsystems interacting with their environments. It is not exactly a single, unified theory, but one that encompasses many perspectives and frameworks that have evolved over time.
[e] First appearing in the 1950s in the works of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Norbert Wiener (cybernetics), and Jay Forrester.
[f] For example, the equilibrium-oriented, mathematical approach of neo-classical economics.
[g] The prescriptive intent of organisation theory—that of improving organisational efficiency—remains.
[h] This paper uses the period names.
[i] A twentieth-century French historiographical movement associated with Marc Bloch (who was killed by the Nazis in WWII) and Lucien Febvre that emphasised long-term social, economic, and geographical structures (longue durée) over political events and great individuals. It promoted interdisciplinary approaches and study of everyday life, mentalities, and collective behaviour as drivers of historical change.
[j] Western European thinkers believed that the world was subject to universal order and mastery of reason, which they then extended from the physical sciences to art and warfare.
[k] Elites everywhere were anxious about the ‘plebianisation’ of warfare by firearms impacting their military dominance. The Indian elite, chivalric in worldview, preferred the stallion and suspected firearms. Elsewhere, elites of nomadic origin were eager not to let firearms upset the dominance of mounted archery. Unable to ensure a steady supply of mounted archery or restrict firearms (because of the open and diverse nature of society, where firearms were being adopted by all classes), the Mughals took the easier way of ignoring firearms. Consequently, far from being one of the ‘gunpowder empires’, gunpowder became more the reason for the Mughals’ undoing.
[l] The English progressively replaced the Tower musket after 1722 with the 62″ Long Land Pattern Service Musket, the 58″ Short Land Pattern, and later the 39″ India Pattern Service Musket, which remained in service for many decades.
[m] Jahgirs, originally revenue assignments, were now granted as support to retiring soldiers, often in invalid thanahs or settlements of such soldiers, which formed communities of men that remained loyal to the Company.
[n] A Mughal rank with jaghir granted to support a contingent of troops, which by this time had become more ceremonial. Titles like Sabut Jung, i.e., steadfast in combat, were additional honorifics granted by the Mughals.
[o] For instance, Tipu’s star fort at Manjarabad demonstrates an inadequate understanding of the trace Italienne (bastion fort), the fortress building and siege warfare precepts of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.
[p] For instance, Rajendra Giri Gosain (also known as Giridhar Bahadur), whose bravery and luck were attributed to his special spiritual powers, had been an auxiliary of Awadh against Abdali in 1756, but his successor Himmat Bahadur and his ‘brother’ Umrao Giri were on the Abdali side at Panipat.
[q] After the war, many received land and cash, enabling their upper classes to settle while their rank and file joined the urban poor. For more, see W.G. Orr, “Armed Religious Ascetics in Northern India”, in Gommans and Kolff (eds), Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia, (New Delhi: OUP, 2000) pp. 185–201.
[r] As exemplified by theorists such as Jacques-François de Chastanet (1655–1743).
[s] The collective spirit, pride, loyalty, and sense of identity that bind members of a military unit together and sustain cohesion, morale, and effectiveness in service and combat.
[t] Complexity theory sees attractor basins as sets of system states towards which dynamics tend to converge even though the system may continue to evolve and fluctuate within it. Thus, unlike classical systems theory idea of equilibrium which implies stasis or balance, the situation within the attractor basin is continually agitated, and if provided sufficient impetus, can break out and gravitate towards another (often unknown) attractor.
[u] The term ‘Anglo-Indian’ implied Englishmen domiciled in India; the pejorative ‘Eurasian’ was reserved for the community subsequently denoted by Anglo-Indian.
[v] The baniya (trader/merchant) was missing, and the sparse Kabul market could not meet the demands of the English cantonment, where signs of want had started appearing.
[w] The oldest recorded instance of ‘shellshock’, a marker of intense battles of this age but also used by many a malingerer until it was made medically invalid after the First World War, occurred at Ferozeshah—one Major Lumley had started riding about issuing absurd orders to battalions as though from the commander. Though threatened with court-martial, he was only invalided out.
[x] Gough retired a hero and was admitted to the peerage, but there was a barrack-room tale that on the morning of Gujarat, some members of his staff had enticed him to climb a watchtower and then removed the ladder, rendering him unable to interfere with the battle any further.
[y] There were many levels of disorganisation within the presidencies, which were marked by conflicting interests and diplomatic requirements: Madras wanted an alliance with the Marathas against Mysore, while Bombay wanted the reverse. Their forces were variously composed, with varying seniority rolls, leading to coordination and protocol issues. The force sent to relieve Calcutta in 1756 was a motley mix of Crown, Bengal, and Madras Council troops, of which Clive commanded only the Madras men; a way around others’ reluctance to serve under him was found by putting the entire force under Admiral Watson, then appointing Clive his deputy. However, this had sparked a quarrel over whether Calcutta had been taken by Clive for the Company or by Watson for the Crown.
[z] One of the few exceptions was John Bennet Hearsey, the general commanding the Barrackpore garrison at the time of Mangal Pandey’s rebellion, whose wife was the granddaughter of the Khanum of Cambay.
[1] J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, John Gross, ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971 (first published 1890)).
[2] See John H. Miller and Scott Page, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton University Press, 2007).
[3] J. Goldstein, “Emergence as a construct: History and Issues,” Emergence 1/ 1 (1999): 49–72, and J. H. Holland, Emergence: From Chaos to Order (Oxford University Press, 1998).
[4] Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society and the Birth of the Modern World (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).
[5] M. Athar Ali, “The Religious World of Jahangir,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 5/1 (1990): 293–294.
[6] Treaty with the Mahrattas, dated the 12th of October 1756, Article XI, found in C.U. Aitchinson, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sunnuds, relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, vol. III, (Calcutta: 1863), pp. 17–22.
[7] ‘Philoleuthus’, A Faithful Narrative of the Capture of the Ship Derby (belonging to the Honourable East India Company, Abraham Anselm commander) by Angria the Pirate on the Coast of Mallabar, December 26, 1735 (London: 1738 (reprinted Miami 2017)).
[8] John Keay, The Honourable Company (London: Prentice Hall, 1993), pp. 301–06.
[9] Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (New Delhi: Manohar, 2024 (first published 1949)).
[10] James W. Hoover, The Origins of the Sepoy Military System: 1498–1770 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1993), p. 56.
[11] René Chartrand, Armies and Wars of the French East India Companies 1664-1770: European, Asian and African Soldiers in India, Africa, the Far East and Louisiana, Series Title: From Reason to Revolution, No 124, (Helion, 2024).
[12] Saikat K. Bose, Boots, Hooves, and Wheels: and the Social Dynamics behind South Asian Warfare (Delhi: Vijbooks, 2015), pp. 395–98 et passim for a discussion on the drilled infantry debate,
[13] See Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 25–27 et passim.
[14] See Narayan Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subramaniam, “Art of War under the Nayakas,” in J.J.L. Gommans and Dirk H.A. Kolff (eds.), Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia, 1000–1800 (New Delhi: OUP, 2000). pp. 133–52 for ballads. Also see Kenneth Chase, Firearm: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Saikat K Bose, Boots, Hooves, and Wheels, pp. 396–98 for firearms.
[15] Seema Alavi, “The Company Army and Rural Society: The Case of Invalid Thanas, 1780–1830,” Modern Asian Studies 27/ 1 (1993): 147–78.
[16] S. Krishna, Travancore Dutch Relationship (Nagercoil: CBH Publications, 1994).
[17] William R. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 149.
[18] Richard Holmes, Wellington: The Iron Duke (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 77.
[19] See William Moorcroft, Observation on the Breeding of Horses within the Provinces under the Bengal Establishment (Simla, 1886) for an exposition on horse breeding and supplies.
[20] Randolf G.S. Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 69–71.
[21] S. H. Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering (2nd ed.) (Westview Press, 2015), and E. Ott, Chaos in Dynamical Systems (2nd ed.), (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
[22] Ayusman Chakraborty, “‘That Disgrace in Human Form’: Tipu Sultan and the Politics of Representation in Three 19th Century English novels,” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (5/ 1, 2013), pp. 55–66.
[23] Roderick Matthews, Flaws in the Jewel: Challenging the Myth of British India (Noida: HarperCollins, 2010), pp. 10–11.
[24] D. Ruelle, and F. Takens, “On the Nature of Turbulence,” Communications in Mathematical Physics, 20(3) (1971): 167–192, and J. Gleick, Chaos: Making a new science (Viking, 1987).
Saikat Bose is an infantry officer with deep interest in history, including history of warfare and religions, and also wargaming and combat modelling. …
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