Soldiers of the Raj

With a profusion of anecdotes conveying the character of India under British rule. Farwell offers a panoramic survey of the Indian army during the 90 years between the Sepoy Revolt and the births of independent India and Pakistan ...

This is the first scholarly study of the subject for twenty years, and the only one based on extensive archival research. The Indian Army conquered India for the British, and protected the Raj against its enemies within and without. In this evocative and compassionate work, David Omissi examines the origins, motives and protests of the several million Indian peasant- soldiers who served the colonial power.

A unique examination of the role of the Indian army in post-World War II India in the run-up to Partition. Daniel Marston draws upon extensive archival research and interviews with veterans of the events of 1947 to provide fresh insight into the final days of the British Raj.

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.

Two and a half million Indians volunteered in the Second World War. Their stories had been lost and silenced, until now. Award-winning historian Yasmin Khan marshals interviews, newspaper reports and unseen archival material to tell the forgotten story of India’s role in the Second World War. We meet soldiers, sailors and non-combatants – prostitutes, nurses, cooks, peasants – whose lives were upended by a war far, far away. From a small Muslim boy arrested for singing anti-recruitment songs, to cooks preparing chapattis on army boats, to a family listening to illicit German radio broadcasts, and a love letter from the first Indian soldier to receive the Victoria Cross, Khan makes us feel and hear the lost voices of a people involved in a war that wasn’t of their choosing. Dramatizing a cataclysm that transformed the subcontinent and led to its independence, The Raj at War undeniably inserts South Asia back into World War II history and confirms that the Empire – and all its subjects – formed both the heart and limbs of Britain’s war efforts and eventual victory.

Barkawi re-imagines the study of war with imperial and multinational armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War.