SAHIB EPUB ED EB

Richard Holmes

• Publisher: HarperPress
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780007137541
• eBook ISBN: 9780007370344
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Sahib is a magnificent history of the British soldier in India from Clive to the end of Empire, making full use of personal accounts from the soldiers who served in the jewel in Britain's Imperial Crown.

This is a stunning account of Indian soldiering in peace and war, from the barrack rooms to the cavalry swirling across open plains. Bestselling military historian Richard Holmes not only illuminates the lives and feelings of the men who served, but also those of the women who followed them across a vast continent, bore their children, and suffered alongside them in the merciless conditions.

NOTES

Introduction

1 Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India (London: 1989), P. 3.

2 Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order (London: 2003).

3 Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World (London: 2002).

4 Kusoom Vadgama, ‘Reassessing the Raj’, in BBC History Magazine, May 2004, p. 96.

5 Moon, British Conquest, P. 4.

6 Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (Calcutta: 1903), pp. 781-2.

7 Sir Walter Lawrence, The India We Served (London: 1928), p. 37.

8 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 388.

9 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 734, and Concise Oxford Dictionary (Oxford: 1976), p. 994.

10 James Lunt (ed.), From Sepoy to Subedar, Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram (London: 1970), p. 23. Hanuman, the monkey god, is one of the most popular members of the Hindu pantheon. Sita Ram Pande served in the Bengal army from 1812-60. The authenticity of this account is sometimes questioned, although, on the balance of probabilities, it seems reliable.

11 Michael Brander (ed.), The Sword and the Pen (London: 1989), p. 88.

12 Lawrence, India We Served, p. 31.

13 Quoted in Dennis Holman, Sikander Sahib: The Life of Colonel James Skinner 1778-1841 (London: 1961), pp. 213-14.

14 Holman, Sikander Sahib, pp. 213-14. There are several things in Skinner’s account of his parents’ relationship that do not quite add up, but of the six children there is no doubt.

15 Holman, Sikander, p. 207.

16 Holman, Sikander, pp. 238-9.

17 The Indian army has been well covered by historians. There are three admirable surveys: Philip Mason’s sublimely anecdotal A Matter of Honour, T. A. Heathcote’s The Indian Army, the best starting point for the subject, and the same author’s scholarly The Military in British India. David Omissi’s important book The Sepoy and the Raj is a social and political history of the Indian army at the apogee of colonial rule, and Lieutenant General S. L. Menezes’s Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century provides an Indian perspective of an institution which could command respect and affection even when it fought for a foreign ruler.

18 Hodson, Rev G. H. Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India: Hodson of Hodson’s Horse (London: 1859) p. 32.

19 Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs (London: 2000), p. 336.

20 See Major F. G. Cardew, Hodson’s Horse 1857-1922 (London: 1928).

21 ‘The Soldier in India’, British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Mss Eur C548. I have done something for Private Smith’s spelling, but his metre, rather like ‘The Poet’ by William McGonagall, is wholly beyond human aid.

22 Peter Stanley, White Mutiny (New York: 1998), p. xi.

PROLOGUE: Drums on the Sutlej

1 Colonel A. E. Fyler, The History of the 50th (or Queen’s Own) Regiment from the earliest date to the year 1881 (London: 1895), pp. 205-6. Drummer Fulcher is the only invention in this section.

2 Thompson had enlisted in 1842 and had already become a colour sergeant, which was brisk work. He was commissioned in 1852, and eventually rose to the rank of major general, ‘working his way up without interest’, that is without money or patronage.

3 Albert Hervey, A Soldier of the Company: The Life of an Indian Ensign 1833-43 (London: 1988), p. 120.

4 See Bryan Foster’s illustrations to Lt Col. L. M. Wilson and Maj. T. P. Crowley, The Infantry Regiments of Surrey (London: 2002), p. 29. These deal specifically with the 50th’s sister regiment, HM’s 31st, but are an invaluable visual reference. The question of the sword carried by drummers at the time is a difficult one. Although the cruciform-hilted short sword, a version of which is still in use, was not officially introduced until 1856, some were certainly carried earlier. Some drummers seem to have continued to carry a version of the officer’s 1822 pattern sword, in theory discontinued for drummers in 1823. See Brian Robson, Swords of the British Army: The Regulation Patterns (London: second edition, 1996), pp. 251-2.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Maps
• Epigraph
• INTRODUCTION
• PROLOGUE
• I IN INDIA’S SUNNY CLIME
• II THE TROOPSHIPS BRING US
• III BREAD AND SALT
• IV THE SMOKE OF THE FUSILLADE
• V INDIA’S EXILES
• EPILOGUE
• GLOSSARY OF INDIAN TERMS
• Bibliography
• ACKNOWLEGDGEMENTS
• NOTES
• INDEX
• P.S.
• About the Author
• Praise
• ALSO BY RICHARD HOLMES
• Copyright
• About the Publisher