Description: This is the first book to give a complete account of all the military forces in India during the last ninety years of the British Raj, between the end of the Mutiny in 1858 and the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947.  The Mutiny itself, a murderous uprising of native troops against their British Officers, was one of the watershed events in the history of India and of the Empire. In the chaos following the bloody suppression of the revolt, the armed forces in India had to be completely reorganised. Farwell’s account, which clarifies he distinctions between the Indian army, the British army in India, and the independent native armies of the various princely states, also provides information about colourful individual units such as Skinner’s Horse and the Khyber Rifles. 

For the general reader, whose introduction to the drama of the British in India may have been Paul Scott’s ‘The Jewel in the Crown’, there is a wealth of magnificent anecdotal material: battles and acts of individual heroism, the pageantry of the Imperial Assemblage, the Singapore Mutiny, the Amritsar massacre that shocked the world in 1919. Also described are domestic arrangements such as the annual trek to the cool climate of he hill stations, such peculiar customs as polo and pig-sticking, and the curious social organisation of the military that both united and divided the British officers and their Indian troops.

The author’s full account of the Japanese-inspired Indian National Army demonstrates how Britain’s firm grip on it’s Indian sword slipped visibly in the last days of the Raj.