Gavin Rand | University of Greenwich (original) (raw)

Papers by Gavin Rand

Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857 -- Volume IV: Military Aspects of the Indian Uprising, 2013

The SAGE Team: Shambhu Sahu, Punita Kaur Mann xvi Gavin Rand and Crispin Bates marginal in recent... more The SAGE Team: Shambhu Sahu, Punita Kaur Mann xvi Gavin Rand and Crispin Bates marginal in recent literature. Despite the fundamentally military origins of the rebellion and counter-insurgency, the histories of those who fought in and commanded the belligerent armies, their motivations, experiences and memories have received less scholarly attention than might have been expected. Similarly, while contemporary responses to the military rebellion have been usefully surveyed to reveal various competing narratives of class, gender, locality and religion, the contours of military life and administration during (and after) 1857 are less clearly defi ned. This absence refl ects a wider neglect of the imperial military within the extant historiography: whilst both South Asian studies and 'the new imperial history' have enjoyed signifi cant expansion in recent years, and questions of empire and military power are frequently invoked in wider discussions of modernity and global history, there are, with notable exceptions, relatively few accounts of the military in British India, unquestionably the preeminent imperial military institution of the colonial period. 5

International journal of military history and historiography, Apr 30, 2019

The book makes a noteworthy contribution towards the (neglected) South African maritime (and in p... more The book makes a noteworthy contribution towards the (neglected) South African maritime (and in particular naval) historiography.

Recruiting, retaining and disciplining military labour was crucial to the expansion of British co... more Recruiting, retaining and disciplining military labour was crucial to the expansion of British colonial power in South Asia, as it had been in preceding centuries. The ability of the East India Company to monopolise the India’s existing military labour markets, and then to nurture new ones, secured colonial rule in the subcontinent and ensured that millions of colonised Indians fought in the global wars of the twentieth century

Desperta Ferro: Historia moderna, 2021

Routledge, Aug 25, 2017

In civilized warfare force is directed against the armed enemy and his defensible positions but n... more In civilized warfare force is directed against the armed enemy and his defensible positions but not against his country and subjects who may be morally unconcerned in the hostilities and innocent of offence. But this is not civilized warfare; the enemy does not possess troops that stand to be attacked, nor defensible posts to be penetrated, robber fastnesses to be scaled, and dwellings containing people, all of them to a man concerned in hostilities, there is not a single man of them who is innocent, who is not, or has not been, engaged in offences, or who does not fully support the misconduct of his tribe, who is not a member of the armed banditti. The enemy harass the troops as they approach, threading the defiles, and leave their village, carrying off everything that can be carried, abandoning only immovable property-walls, roofs, and crops. What are the troops to do? Are they to spare these crops and houses, losing the only opportunity they are ever likely to have of inflicting damages on the enemy, marching back to their quarters without effecting anything, amidst the contempt of the hillmen? …To spare these villages would be as unreasonable as to spare the commissariat supplies or arsenals of a civilised enemy.

Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even ... more Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even in peacetime, the military was the largest drain on the colonial exchequer, typically employing more than 200,000 troops through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Indian Army also played a crucial role in projecting and asserting British imperial power beyond South Asia, most obviously during the global wars of the twentieth century, in which millions of Indians served. These conflicts did much to shape South Asia’s engagements with, and place in, the emergent postcolonial world order, just as war and the military informed metropolitan engagements with, and understandings of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century. In South Asia, as in Europe and beyond, war was one of the principal vectors for the movements of people, and ideas, through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Routledge India, Aug 29, 2017

Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even ... more Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even in peacetime, the military was the largest drain on the colonial exchequer, typically employing more than 200,000 troops through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Indian Army also played a crucial role in projecting and asserting British imperial power beyond South Asia, most obviously during the global wars of the twentieth century, in which millions of Indians served. These conflicts did much to shape South Asia’s engagements with, and place in, the emergent postcolonial world order, just as war and the military informed metropolitan engagements with, and understandings of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century. In South Asia, as in Europe and beyond, war was one of the principal vectors for the movements of people, and ideas, through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Culture, Conflict and the Military in Colonial South Asia

Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia, 2021

This paper explores aspects of imperial military administration in the aftermath of the rebellion... more This paper explores aspects of imperial military administration in the aftermath of the rebellion. In focussing on the various ways in which 1857 was understood and interpreted, as well as on the ‘lessons’ the events were thought to convey, I also want to explore how reactions to the rebellion influenced military and colonial strategies in the latter nineteenth century. If it is widely accepted that 1857 had a profound impact on the ideologies of colonial rule in South Asia and beyond, we have less sense of the administrative mechanisms on which ideologies of rule devolved. By examining the transmissions between 1857 and the ‘martial race’ reforms of the 1880s and 1890s, I hope to illuminate certain aspects of military administration which I think have been rather marginalised in some of the existing literature. In the aftermath of the rebellion, race and (especially) caste were key explanatory tropes for colonial administrators and historians alike and one of the principal ‘lessons...

Tracing the impacts of 1857 on the organisation of the Indian Army in the late nineteenth century... more Tracing the impacts of 1857 on the organisation of the Indian Army in the late nineteenth century, this paper argues that the rebellion – and colonial readings of and reactions to the uprising – played an important, and largely unrecognised, role in shaping military administration in the 1880s and 1890s. The events of 1857 transposed questions of military organisation into issues of pan-imperial significance whilst, at the same time, emphasising the significance of local, administrative expertise and centring ethnography as a key modality of colonial knowledge. This formatting of imperial military strategy, the paper argues, undergirded not only the reconstruction of the Indian Army after the rebellion but also the major reorganisations of the 1880s and 1890s, often depicted as a decisive break with the post-1857 settlement. The elaboration and codification of racial identities in the final decades of the century, reflected in the emergence of the martial race discourse, can best be...

This paper explores the intersection – and interconnectedness – of modernity and liberalism in im... more This paper explores the intersection – and interconnectedness – of modernity and liberalism in imperial Britain. Taking liberalism principally as a rationality or technology of modern rule, the following examines how nominally liberal strategies of rule were adapted and evolved in colonial India. Much of what follows is concerned with the colonial city, which this essay suggests was integral to and expressive of novel forms of governance which developed from the mid-nineteenth century. However, whilst recent work in this field has done much to extend understandings of urbanisation and governance, the colonial city has only recently become the subject of significant scholarly investigation. The role of empire in animating liberal technologies of rule in the metropole, like the impacts of liberal rationalities in colonial cities, remains in need of further unpicking, as do the coterminous histories of empire, liberalism and modernity in Britain.

The chapter offers a cultural reading of colonial campaigning, arguing that combat on the frontie... more The chapter offers a cultural reading of colonial campaigning, arguing that combat on the frontier was shaped, in important ways, by a cultural exchange: strategic, tactical and logistical calculations reflected ideas and assumptions about the frontier, its population and their relationship to colonial power. By tracing the development of specific rationalities for frontier conflict through a series of deployments, the chapter reveals the intersection of colonial culture and imperial military power, confirming Nicholas Thomas’s assertion that colonial violence was always ‘mediated and enframed by structures of meaning’.

Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even ... more Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even in peacetime, the military was the largest drain on the colonial exchequer, typically employing more than 200,000 troops through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Indian Army also played a crucial role in projecting and asserting British imperial power beyond South Asia, most obviously during the global wars of the twentieth century, in which millions of Indians served. These conflicts did much to shape South Asia’s engagements with, and place in, the emergent postcolonial world order, just as war and the military informed metropolitan engagements with, and understandings of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century. In South Asia, as in Europe and beyond, war was one of the principal vectors for the movements of people, and ideas, through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Preface Introduction: The 'Subaltern at Arms' - GAVIN RAND and CRISPIN BATES The Sepoy Sp... more Preface Introduction: The 'Subaltern at Arms' - GAVIN RAND and CRISPIN BATES The Sepoy Speaks: Discerning the Significance of the Vellore Mutiny - JAMES W FREY Combat, Combat Motivation and the Construction of Identities: A Case Study - KAUSHIK ROY Holy Warriors: Religion as Military Modus Operandi - CRISPIN BATES and MARINA CARTER Logistic Failures on the Part of the Rebels in 1857 - WILLIAM DALRYMPLE Durgadas and Sitaram: Tales of Loyalty in the Great Indian Uprising - SABYASACHI DASGUPTA Reconstructing the Imperial Military after the Rebellion - GAVIN RAND Finding those Men with 'Guts': The Ascription and Re-ascription of Martial Identities in India after the Uprising - GAJENDRA SINGH Mutiny, War or Small War? Revisiting an Old Debate - GAUTAM CHAKRAVARTY Index

Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857 -- Volume IV: Military Aspects of the Indian Uprising, 2013

The SAGE Team: Shambhu Sahu, Punita Kaur Mann xvi Gavin Rand and Crispin Bates marginal in recent... more The SAGE Team: Shambhu Sahu, Punita Kaur Mann xvi Gavin Rand and Crispin Bates marginal in recent literature. Despite the fundamentally military origins of the rebellion and counter-insurgency, the histories of those who fought in and commanded the belligerent armies, their motivations, experiences and memories have received less scholarly attention than might have been expected. Similarly, while contemporary responses to the military rebellion have been usefully surveyed to reveal various competing narratives of class, gender, locality and religion, the contours of military life and administration during (and after) 1857 are less clearly defi ned. This absence refl ects a wider neglect of the imperial military within the extant historiography: whilst both South Asian studies and 'the new imperial history' have enjoyed signifi cant expansion in recent years, and questions of empire and military power are frequently invoked in wider discussions of modernity and global history, there are, with notable exceptions, relatively few accounts of the military in British India, unquestionably the preeminent imperial military institution of the colonial period. 5

International journal of military history and historiography, Apr 30, 2019

The book makes a noteworthy contribution towards the (neglected) South African maritime (and in p... more The book makes a noteworthy contribution towards the (neglected) South African maritime (and in particular naval) historiography.

Recruiting, retaining and disciplining military labour was crucial to the expansion of British co... more Recruiting, retaining and disciplining military labour was crucial to the expansion of British colonial power in South Asia, as it had been in preceding centuries. The ability of the East India Company to monopolise the India’s existing military labour markets, and then to nurture new ones, secured colonial rule in the subcontinent and ensured that millions of colonised Indians fought in the global wars of the twentieth century

Desperta Ferro: Historia moderna, 2021

Routledge, Aug 25, 2017

In civilized warfare force is directed against the armed enemy and his defensible positions but n... more In civilized warfare force is directed against the armed enemy and his defensible positions but not against his country and subjects who may be morally unconcerned in the hostilities and innocent of offence. But this is not civilized warfare; the enemy does not possess troops that stand to be attacked, nor defensible posts to be penetrated, robber fastnesses to be scaled, and dwellings containing people, all of them to a man concerned in hostilities, there is not a single man of them who is innocent, who is not, or has not been, engaged in offences, or who does not fully support the misconduct of his tribe, who is not a member of the armed banditti. The enemy harass the troops as they approach, threading the defiles, and leave their village, carrying off everything that can be carried, abandoning only immovable property-walls, roofs, and crops. What are the troops to do? Are they to spare these crops and houses, losing the only opportunity they are ever likely to have of inflicting damages on the enemy, marching back to their quarters without effecting anything, amidst the contempt of the hillmen? …To spare these villages would be as unreasonable as to spare the commissariat supplies or arsenals of a civilised enemy.

Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even ... more Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even in peacetime, the military was the largest drain on the colonial exchequer, typically employing more than 200,000 troops through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Indian Army also played a crucial role in projecting and asserting British imperial power beyond South Asia, most obviously during the global wars of the twentieth century, in which millions of Indians served. These conflicts did much to shape South Asia’s engagements with, and place in, the emergent postcolonial world order, just as war and the military informed metropolitan engagements with, and understandings of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century. In South Asia, as in Europe and beyond, war was one of the principal vectors for the movements of people, and ideas, through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Routledge India, Aug 29, 2017

Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even ... more Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even in peacetime, the military was the largest drain on the colonial exchequer, typically employing more than 200,000 troops through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Indian Army also played a crucial role in projecting and asserting British imperial power beyond South Asia, most obviously during the global wars of the twentieth century, in which millions of Indians served. These conflicts did much to shape South Asia’s engagements with, and place in, the emergent postcolonial world order, just as war and the military informed metropolitan engagements with, and understandings of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century. In South Asia, as in Europe and beyond, war was one of the principal vectors for the movements of people, and ideas, through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Culture, Conflict and the Military in Colonial South Asia

Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia, 2021

This paper explores aspects of imperial military administration in the aftermath of the rebellion... more This paper explores aspects of imperial military administration in the aftermath of the rebellion. In focussing on the various ways in which 1857 was understood and interpreted, as well as on the ‘lessons’ the events were thought to convey, I also want to explore how reactions to the rebellion influenced military and colonial strategies in the latter nineteenth century. If it is widely accepted that 1857 had a profound impact on the ideologies of colonial rule in South Asia and beyond, we have less sense of the administrative mechanisms on which ideologies of rule devolved. By examining the transmissions between 1857 and the ‘martial race’ reforms of the 1880s and 1890s, I hope to illuminate certain aspects of military administration which I think have been rather marginalised in some of the existing literature. In the aftermath of the rebellion, race and (especially) caste were key explanatory tropes for colonial administrators and historians alike and one of the principal ‘lessons...

Tracing the impacts of 1857 on the organisation of the Indian Army in the late nineteenth century... more Tracing the impacts of 1857 on the organisation of the Indian Army in the late nineteenth century, this paper argues that the rebellion – and colonial readings of and reactions to the uprising – played an important, and largely unrecognised, role in shaping military administration in the 1880s and 1890s. The events of 1857 transposed questions of military organisation into issues of pan-imperial significance whilst, at the same time, emphasising the significance of local, administrative expertise and centring ethnography as a key modality of colonial knowledge. This formatting of imperial military strategy, the paper argues, undergirded not only the reconstruction of the Indian Army after the rebellion but also the major reorganisations of the 1880s and 1890s, often depicted as a decisive break with the post-1857 settlement. The elaboration and codification of racial identities in the final decades of the century, reflected in the emergence of the martial race discourse, can best be...

This paper explores the intersection – and interconnectedness – of modernity and liberalism in im... more This paper explores the intersection – and interconnectedness – of modernity and liberalism in imperial Britain. Taking liberalism principally as a rationality or technology of modern rule, the following examines how nominally liberal strategies of rule were adapted and evolved in colonial India. Much of what follows is concerned with the colonial city, which this essay suggests was integral to and expressive of novel forms of governance which developed from the mid-nineteenth century. However, whilst recent work in this field has done much to extend understandings of urbanisation and governance, the colonial city has only recently become the subject of significant scholarly investigation. The role of empire in animating liberal technologies of rule in the metropole, like the impacts of liberal rationalities in colonial cities, remains in need of further unpicking, as do the coterminous histories of empire, liberalism and modernity in Britain.

The chapter offers a cultural reading of colonial campaigning, arguing that combat on the frontie... more The chapter offers a cultural reading of colonial campaigning, arguing that combat on the frontier was shaped, in important ways, by a cultural exchange: strategic, tactical and logistical calculations reflected ideas and assumptions about the frontier, its population and their relationship to colonial power. By tracing the development of specific rationalities for frontier conflict through a series of deployments, the chapter reveals the intersection of colonial culture and imperial military power, confirming Nicholas Thomas’s assertion that colonial violence was always ‘mediated and enframed by structures of meaning’.

Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even ... more Military power was central to securing, policing and defending colonial rule in South Asia. Even in peacetime, the military was the largest drain on the colonial exchequer, typically employing more than 200,000 troops through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Indian Army also played a crucial role in projecting and asserting British imperial power beyond South Asia, most obviously during the global wars of the twentieth century, in which millions of Indians served. These conflicts did much to shape South Asia’s engagements with, and place in, the emergent postcolonial world order, just as war and the military informed metropolitan engagements with, and understandings of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century. In South Asia, as in Europe and beyond, war was one of the principal vectors for the movements of people, and ideas, through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Preface Introduction: The 'Subaltern at Arms' - GAVIN RAND and CRISPIN BATES The Sepoy Sp... more Preface Introduction: The 'Subaltern at Arms' - GAVIN RAND and CRISPIN BATES The Sepoy Speaks: Discerning the Significance of the Vellore Mutiny - JAMES W FREY Combat, Combat Motivation and the Construction of Identities: A Case Study - KAUSHIK ROY Holy Warriors: Religion as Military Modus Operandi - CRISPIN BATES and MARINA CARTER Logistic Failures on the Part of the Rebels in 1857 - WILLIAM DALRYMPLE Durgadas and Sitaram: Tales of Loyalty in the Great Indian Uprising - SABYASACHI DASGUPTA Reconstructing the Imperial Military after the Rebellion - GAVIN RAND Finding those Men with 'Guts': The Ascription and Re-ascription of Martial Identities in India after the Uprising - GAJENDRA SINGH Mutiny, War or Small War? Revisiting an Old Debate - GAUTAM CHAKRAVARTY Index

This book offers diverse and original perspectives on South Asia’s imperial military history. Unl... more This book offers diverse and original perspectives on South Asia’s imperial military history. Unlike prevailing studies, the chapters in the volume emphasize both the vital role of culture in framing imperial military practice and the multiple cultural effects of colonial military service and engagements. The volume spans from the early East India Company period through to the Second World War and India’s independence, exploring themes such as the military in the field and at leisure, as well as examining the effects of imperial deployments in South Asia and across the British Empire. Drawing extensively on new archival research, the book integrates previously disparate accounts of imperial military history and raises new questions about culture and operational practice in the colonial Indian Army.

The 'ReNewing' project, coordinated by Gavin Rand (Greenwich) and Kaushik Roy (Jadavpur) and supp... more The 'ReNewing' project, coordinated by Gavin Rand (Greenwich) and Kaushik Roy (Jadavpur) and supported by the British Academy, will host two international symposia exploring the cultural and military history of colonial South Asia.

The symposia – the first in Greenwich, London, on 22-23 August, the second in Kolkata in January 2014 – will reassess the new military history of South Asia, developing networks to support further international collaborations amongst scholars with interests in the history and legacies of the colonial military.

For more information, please contact Gavin Rand (g.t.rand@gre.ac.uk)