History UsefulNotes / KiplingsFinest

The British Indian Army (as it is referred to in Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}) fought in a number of local wars, notably in actions against tribesmen in Afghanistan and along its borders. During the Great Game, the Indian Army would have been responsible for providing the primary defence of the colony if the Russians decided to invade India.

Its first captains were typical Elizabethan [[IntrepidMerchant warrior-merchants]] seeking to gain profit by honest trade or by [[{{Plunder}} more primitive methods]]. In the process they set up a number of trading posts with the permission of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, who at that time was the ruler of (most of) India. The Company generally made nice with the Mughal rulers. Some storied incidents such as the pirate Henry Avery's raid on the Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai provoked the ire of Emperor Aurangzeb which led to a major diplomatic incident that had the company make nice with the Mughals. Aurangzeb was a military expansionist who was also reversing his family's policy of religious tolerance and this led to a series of rebellions within India, and the rise of competing empires such as the Marathas and the Nizams of Hyderabad as well as other Kingdoms in the East. The Mughal Empire suffered a major body blow in the 1739 Sack of Delhi by the Persian conqueror Nader Shah. This was the ShockingDefeatLegacy from which the Mughals never recovered from. The Emperor's power was disintegrating in the face of European powers and [[OccupiersOutOfOurCountry internal pressure]]. Because of this, the Company began to hire local mercenaries to defend its trading posts. From this seemingly innocuous policy UsefulNotes/TheRaj was slowly born. From its victory in the 1757 Battle of Plassey to the 1857 Mutiny, a series of conflicts took place which led to the growing hegemony of the East India Company.

* NeverLiveItDown: After the Great Mutiny, several generations of Indian soldiery had to live with the fact that TheGovernment didn't quite trust them.

It also performed gallantly in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It was in these wars that [[UsefulNotes/NepaliWithNastyKnives the Gurkhas]] became famous for their ferocity and valour, as well as being [[ThePollyanna eternally optimistic]]. It also produced the image of the mustachioed, exotic Indian soldier with lilting accents and total obedience to his British officers, as well as being utterly steadfast on the field. The statement was that [[BadassBoast you didn't see their backs until they were dead]]. Their contribution (and for that matter, that of Imperial forces in general) is [[DudeWheresMyRespect often overlooked]] by Western Media, much to the chagrin of the Indians - which is understandable, considering that they contributed over ''two million men'' for the British Empire's war machine - all volunteers. And who were the ones picking up the slack - with roughly a million other Imperial troops (Australians, New Zealanders and Burmese forming the bulk of them) as the British Regulars were licking their wounds in impotence after the curb-stomping they got at the hands of the Axis. And being instrumental in driving back UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and his Afrika Korps, and were the ones to give Field Marshal Harold Alexander the distinction of being the first General to conquer Rome from the south since UsefulNotes/FlaviusBelisarius.

It also performed gallantly in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It was in these wars that [[UsefulNotes/NepaliWithNastyKnives the Gurkhas]] became famous for their ferocity and valour, as well as being [[ThePollyanna eternally optimistic]]. It also produced the image of the [[BadassBeard mustachioed]], exotic Indian soldier with lilting accents and total obedience to his British officers, as well as being utterly steadfast on the field. The statement was that [[BadassBoast you didn't see their backs until they were dead]]. Their contribution (and for that matter, that of Imperial forces in general) is [[DudeWheresMyRespect often overlooked]] by Western Media, much to the chagrin of the Indians - which is understandable, considering that they contributed over ''two million men'' for the British Empire's war machine - all volunteers. And who were the ones picking up the slack - with roughly a million other Imperial troops (Australians, New Zealanders and Burmese forming the bulk of them) as the British Regulars were licking their wounds in impotence after the curb-stomping they got at the hands of the Axis. And being instrumental in driving back UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and his Afrika Korps, and were the ones to give Field Marshal Harold Alexander the distinction of being the first General to conquer Rome from the south since UsefulNotes/FlaviusBelisarius.

After this came a number of small scale wars and counter-insurgencies and the major rebellion of 1857. English and International historians call it variously the Sepoy Rebellion (Sepoy meaning "Indian Infantryman" deriving from the Urdu term Sipahi which means soldier or conscript). This was caused by discontent in the ranks and a feeling that the Company's VastBureaucracy was unsympathetic to their cultural traditions (demonstrably true - see the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857#The_Enfield_Rifle Greased Cartridges Incident]]). A number of regiments revolted and declared themselves for the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar (at that point a figurehead for a VestigialEmpire) as well as a series of rival feudal kings who were chafing under the Company's annexation policies by which it would nullify existing claims to the throne using the "doctrine of lapse" (i.e. the EITC used the lack of heir as an excuse to claim territory, and if there were heirs present, they would arbitrary declare those claims illegitimate with more or less zero reasons other than ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem and simple racism). The most storied of these include Tatya Tope and Rani Laxmibhai of Jhansi who captured the Victorian imagination as a LadyOfWar and is an IconOfRebellion in India.

The East India Company proved shockingly incompetent at managing this crisis which it had more or less created and entirely deserved, and the spectacle of a non-white army attacking English lives and property was incredibly alarming to UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain and its white supremacist assumptions as well as its prestige as the world's unquestioned superpower. It would simply not do for them to be humiliated internationally by a bunch of darkies in some heathen land. So the Crown sent its own troops to suppress the mutiny with what modern historians consider to be the most punitive expedition unleashed in the history of the British Army. At the time, the English newspapers which controlled the global media favored the English side and focused on the atrocities of the mutineers namely at Cawnpore where English women and children were killed and their bodies dumped in the grave. Indian historians both in the lead-up to Independence, and after the war, focus on the far greater atrocities of the British Army, which involved the sacking and looting of Delhi and Lucknow, with much RapePillageAndBurn of villages, and casualties of citizens in the thousands. It culminated in the exile of the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffar into exile in Rangoon Burma, while his children, the heirs of the Mughal Throne were summarily executed by British officers and their bodies buried inceremoniously at Delhi's Khooni Darwaza ([[MeaningfulName Bloody Gate]] in English[[note]]Said Gate has long been storied in Indian historian for its series of violent incidents of which the death of the Mughal Princes became famous[[/note]]).

It also performed gallantly in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It was in these wars that [[NepaliWithNastyKnives the Gurkhas]] became famous for their ferocity and valour, as well as being [[ThePollyanna eternally optimistic]]. It also produced the image of the [[BadassBeard mustachioed]], exotic Indian soldier with lilting accents and total obedience to his British officers, as well as being utterly steadfast on the field. The statement was that [[BadassBoast you didn't see their backs until they were dead]]. Their contribution (and for that matter, that of Imperial forces in general) is [[DudeWheresMyRespect often overlooked]] by Western Media, much to the chagrin of the Indians - which is understandable, considering that they contributed over ''two million men'' for the British Empire's war machine - all volunteers. And who were the ones picking up the slack - with roughly a million other Imperial troops (Australians, New Zealanders and Burmese forming the bulk of them) as the British Regulars were licking their wounds in impotence after the curb-stomping they got at the hands of the Axis. And being instrumental in driving back UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and his Afrika Korps, and were the ones to give Field Marshal Harold Alexander the distinction of being the first General to conquer Rome from the south since UsefulNotes/FlaviusBelisarius.

The Indian Army had what the British considered a number of colourful eccentricities. More specifically, it smoothly adapted the famous British regimental system to harness local ethnic loyalties into the government's service. One (somewhat) controversial aspect of this was the [[ProudWarriorRace Martial Race]] theory which held that certain cultures provided better soldiers. Those who favoured this claimed that these were people who grew up in tough places where they HadToBeSharp. Others point out that this was simple bigotry that helped the English DivideAndConquer. Of course, not all of the Army was from "Martial Races" and some notable regiments like the [[TheEngineer Bombay, Bengal and Madras Sappers and Miners]] - [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous who are generally regarded as the absolute best]] - were from "non-Martial" cultures. By UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the demand for CannonFodder was so high that even Untouchables were fighting and accounted themselves fairly well. This "dilution" [[VindicatedByHistory does not seem to have hurt the efficiency]] of the Indian Army, although it paled compared to the institution of Subhash Chandra's Bose rebel Indian Nationalist Army which despite being numerically smaller, and allied with UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan was the first Indian army [[FairForItsDay without caste and religious segregation that was also open to women]]. The modern Indian army resembles Bose's structure more than the British.

* OpposingCombatPhilosophies: The Military technology match up between Europeans and Asians was roughly equal in the eighteenth century. The chief difference was tactics. India had some of the finest cavalry in the world. However many Indian princes were too sloppy to train their Infantry properly while Kipling's Finest had long learned that with very good [[SergeantRock Sergeant Rocks]] (which they had) they could train an infantry force out of anything, whether Europeans or local mercenaries. Sikhs were an exception. Their army was a European copycat and probably as well drilled as any Army from an equivalent sized European nation.

* UnderestimatingBadassery: UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte once sneered at The Duke of Wellington for being a "sepoy general" . Presumably he thought that an insult. He was later corrected in his mistake. Though according to historians, Napoleon did not really underestimate Wellesley, he said that to defuse tensions among his Generals and build morale.

The Company evolved into a state of its own that often was more like an ally than a subject of the British crown. The East India Company's security guards evolved into a full fledged army; indeed one larger then most European armies and just as well trained and armed. Each time a [[EarthIsABattlefield major war]] broke out, this provided a convenient excuse to gobble up possessions of the enemy and not coincidentally, to conquer and [[YouWillBeAssimilated assimilate]] local powers accused of being to sympathetic toward said enemy - not entirely without merit, such as in the case of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fran%C3%A7ois_Dupleix Joseph François Dupleix]]. By [[FinalBattle Waterloo]], the Company - and by extension, Britain - was the only power in the subcontinent.

It also performed gallantly in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It was in these wars that [[NepaliWithNastyKnives the Gurkhas]] became famous for their ferocity and valour, as well as being [[ThePollyanna eternally optimistic]]. It also produced the image of the [[BadassBeard mustachioed]], exotic Indian soldier with lilting accents and total obedience to his British officers, as well as being utterly steadfast on the field. The statement was that [[BadassBoast you didn't see their backs until they were dead]]. Their contribution (and for that matter, that of Imperial forces in general) is [[DudeWheresMyRespect often overlooked]] by Western Media, much to the chagrin of the Indians - which is understandable, considering that they contributed over ''two million men'' for the British Empire's war machine - [[HolyShitQuotient all volunteers.]] And who were the ones picking up the slack - with roughly a million other Imperial troops (Australians, New Zealanders and Burmese forming the bulk of them) as the British Regulars were licking their wounds in impotence after the curb-stomping they got at the hands of the Axis. And being instrumental in driving back UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and his Afrika Korps, and were the ones to give Field Marshal Harold Alexander the distinction of being the first General to conquer Rome from the south since UsefulNotes/FlaviusBelisarius.

The East India Company proved shockingly incompetent at managing this crisis which it had more or less created and entirely deserved, and the spectacle of a non-white army attacking English lives and property was incredibly alarming to VictorianBritain and its white supremacist assumptions as well as its prestige as the world's unquestioned superpower. It would simply not do for them to be humiliated internationally by a bunch of darkies in some heathen land. So the Crown sent its own troops to suppress the mutiny with what modern historians consider to be the most punitive expedition unleashed in the history of the British Army. At the time, the English newspapers which controlled the global media favored the English side and focused on the atrocities of the mutineers namely at Cawnpore where English women and children were killed and their bodies dumped in the grave. Indian historians both in the lead-up to Independence, and after the war, focus on the far greater atrocities of the British Army, which involved the sacking and looting of Delhi and Lucknow, with much RapePillageAndBurn of villages, and casualties of citizens in the thousands. It culminated in the exile of the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffar into exile in Rangoon Burma, while his children, the heirs of the Mughal Throne were summarily executed by British officers and their bodies buried inceremoniously at Delhi's Khooni Darwaza ([[MeaningfulName Bloody Gate]] in English[[note]]Said Gate has long been storied in Indian historian for its series of violent incidents of which the death of the Mughal Princes became famous[[/note]]).

* ColonelBadass : So many.
* UsefulNotes/CommonRanks: Mostly the British Indian Army used the same ranks as the British Army, but there were some additional ones. Because Indians could not become commissioned officers until the twilight years of the Empire, extra ranks were invented for them to go between (white) non-commissioned and commissioned officers. These include Subedar and Jemadar--the latter being the inspiration for the name "Jem'Hadar" in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'', who similarly are soldiers commanded by officers of a different race.

* FourStarBadass: Several of Britain's most famous generals commanded Kipling's Finest at one time or another. Only one or two were "great captains"(Wellington and possibly Slim) but a number were competent and brave commanders.

* SiblingTeam: Richard and Arthur Wellesley. Richard was [[BadassBureaucrat Governor-General]]. His more famous brother became [[FourStarBadass the Duke of Wellington]].

* UnderestimatingBadassery: UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte once sneered at [[FourStarBadass The Duke of Wellington]] for being a "sepoy general" . Presumably he thought that an insult. He was later corrected in his mistake. Though according to historians, Napoleon did not really underestimate Wellesley, he said that to defuse tensions among his Generals and build morale.

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Every regiment that is reasonably old has a CrowningMomentOfAwesome sometime in its history.

* RivalTurnedEvil: At least from the perspective of the British Empire. [[LesCollaborateurs The Indian National Army]] in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII were a group of Indian nationalists who formed an army that had the goal of forming an independent country with the help of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany and ImperialJapan. It is not clear what kind of country it might have become. On one hand, Bose and his followers did have some authoritarian and Fascist tendencies. On the other hand, they also disregarded the complex race rules that characterized the British India and all ethnicities of India served equally among its ranks (British, on the other hand, carefully segregated various ethnic groups in India among its ranks and carefully drew distinction between "Martial" races and others.) 1946 trials of Indian National Army officers for treason at Delhi's Red Fort (with Jawahalal Nehru as the chief defense counsel) led to nationwide mutinies and protests throughout India where the secularists and religious, Hindus and Muslims, military and civilians stood hand in hand against British imperialism that effectively broke the British Empire on Indian subcontinent. In India, Bengal and Pakistan today, however, its leader Bose and the army itself are widely celebrated (one of the few things all three countries agree on); given the sort of company the INA kept, that may say something about [[TheEmpire the twilight years of British rule in India.]]

* While the British and international historians call it the Mutiny some Indians call it the [[InsistentTerminology First War of Indian Independence]] or the 1857 Uprising. [[TakeAThirdOption A more neutral term is the Revolt of 1857]].

Incidentally, the 1857 Mutiny is still quite controversial in India. While the British and international historians call it the Mutiny some Indians call it the [[InsistentTerminology First War of Indian Independence]] or the 1857 Uprising. [[TakeAThirdOption A more neutral term is the Revolt of 1857]]. Even among Indians, seeing 1857 as a nationalist revolt is contentious because the motivations of the sepoys were in a lot of cases religious, and in other cases reactionary (i.e. warrior caste Hindus offended at lower-caste Hindus who converted to Christianity being treated equally by the British). The Mutineers and their factions were backed by Indian rulers and kings who while having righteous grievances against the Crown and were popular figureheads did not generally sympathize with the movement. The Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffar was a poet and had no intention to support or serve the mutiny but he more or less GotVolunteered to serve as Emperor in full rank and meaning. In most cases these rulers were regional powers with likely little grand plan for national unification, which in that context meant the Mughal Empire revived, which would not appeal to some Hindu rulers and those in South India. In addition, there were many revolts and mutinies before 1857, such as in Mysore, and South Indians resent the implication that a revolt largely centered in North and Eastern India is considered more nationalistic than earlier ones in the South. There's also the problem that the British Crown suppressed the Mutiny with the help of Sikhs and other Indian rulers who hated the Mutineers and the Sepoy revolt. For the Sikhs, it was because the soldiers of the Mutiny had served the English Crown during the Conquest of Sindh and had committed much RapePillageAndBurn then. Seeing it as a nationalist revolt means that the local groups of people who fought for the English become LesCollaborateurs while in the perspective of the local allies of the Crown, the Sepoys were the original collaborators and stooges for the English crown and their mutiny, as Creator/KarlMarx noted (the only voice in the English press that openly supported the Mutiny) was a case of them biting the hand that fed them. So as such, while the 1857 Mutiny and Uprising is a major event in Indian nationalism, and the history of India, it was then and remains later, a highly polarizing event with contradictory and mixed results.

The Mutiny was the EndOfAnAge. It marked the end of the East India Company as a NGOSuperpower and in so far as the Mutiny was a revolt against the company, it did succeed in toppling the government. It was also the most significant military revolt by Indian rulers, and it was the last time Indian kings and rulers commanded soldiers and armies in battle, and it marked the end of Indian feudalism. After this, the English government ruled directly under UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria who was bestowed the title Empress of India by Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli, making the new colony the ''Empire'' of India, allowing the Monarch to be an Empress. The British Indian Army (as it is referred to in Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}) fought in a number of local wars, notably in actions against tribesmen in Afghanistan and along its borders. During the Great Game, the Indian Army would have been responsible for providing the primary defence of the colony if the Russians decided to invade India. It also performed gallantly in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

The Indian Army had what the British considered a number of colorful eccentricities. More specifically it smoothly adapted the famous British regimental system to harness local ethnic loyalties into the government's service. One controversial aspect of this was the [[ProudWarriorRace Martial Race]] theory which held that certain cultures provided better soldiers. Those who favored this claimed that these were people who grew up in tough places where they HadToBeSharp . Others point out that this was simple bigotry that helped the English DivideAndConquer. Of course, not all of this army was from "martial races" and some notable regiments like the [[TheEngineer Bombay, Bengal and Madras Sappers and Miners]] were from "non-martial" cultures. By UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the demand for CannonFodder was so high that even Untouchables were fighting and accounted themselves fairly well. This "dilution" does not seem to have hurt the efficiency of the Indian Army, although it paled compared to the institution of Subhash Chandra's Bose rebel Indian Nationalist Army which despite being numerically smaller, and allied with UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan was the first Indian army without caste and religious segregations that was also open to women. The modern Indian army resembles Bose's structure more than the British.

Its first captains were typical Elizabethan [[IntrepidMerchant warrior-merchants]] seeking to gain profit by honest trade or by [[{{Plunder}} more primitive methods]]. In the process they set up a number of trading posts with the permission of [[TheEmperor Grand Mogul]] (AKA The Mughal Emperor), who at that time was the ruler of (most of) India. The catch was that the Emperor's power was disintegrating in the face of European powers and [[OccupiersOutOfOurCountry internal pressure]]. Because of this The Company began to hire local mercenaries to defend its trading posts. From this seemingly innocuous policy UsefulNotes/TheRaj was slowly born. The next two hundred years were a long GambitPileup between The Company, other Europeans, the Mughal Emperor, and the various local Asian powers.

During this time The Company evolved into a state of its own that often was more like an ally than a subject of the British crown. The East India Company's security guards evolved into a full fledged army; indeed one larger then most European armies and just as well trained and armed. Each time a [[EarthIsABattlefield major war]] broke out, this provided a convenient excuse to gobble up possessions of the enemy and not coincidentally, to conquer and [[YouWillBeAssimilated assimilate]] local powers accused of being to sympathetic toward said enemy - not entirely without merit, such as in the case of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fran%C3%A7ois_Dupleix Joseph François Dupleix]]. By [[FinalBattle Waterloo]], the Company - and by extension, Britain - was the only power in the subcontinent.

After this came a number of small scale wars and counter-insurgencies and one big rebellion; the Sepoy Rebellion (Sepoy meaning "Indian Infantryman") or Great Mutiny in the mid-nineteenth century (The Indians, needless to say, do ''not'' call it that. They call it the [[InsistentTerminology First War of Indian Independence]] - despite the fact that "India" as an entity [[FridgeLogic didn't exist]] at the time. [[TakeAThirdOption A more neutral term is the Revolt of 1857]]).

This was caused by discontent in the ranks and a feeling that the Company's VastBureaucracy was unsympathetic to their cultural traditions (demonstrably true - see the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857#The_Enfield_Rifle Greased Cartridges Incident]]). A number of regiments revolted and declared themselves for the Grand Mogul (long an anachronism but still a [[PuppetKing useful figurehead]]). This sparked a full scale civil war in which the loyalist company troops with the help of crown forces defeated the rebels in a bloody campaign marked by hard fighting and rather [[SarcasmMode spectacular]] [[ObligatoryWarCrimeScene atrocities]] on both sides (notoriously the Cawnpore massacre by the rebels, and on the other side the practice of strapping captured rebels over the mouths of cannons and [[LudicrousGibs firing them]]). At this the British government decided that the Company had made a mess of things and should get back to trading tea and leave ruling to rulers. And the Company's army became the Queen's... or rather, the Empress's, as UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria was rather miffed at the thought that her daughter, as wife of [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Crown Prince Frederick]], would become an Empress and technically outrank her; UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli saw the India fiasco as a way to give the Queen an Imperial title, making the new colony the ''Empire'' of India, allowing the Monarch to be an Empress. Where did she get the title from, you ask? Why, by stripping it from the Grand Mogul, of course! [[ShaggyDogStory Who ended up being exiled and dying a pauper in Myanmar]]. All of which brought the by now absolutely meaningless Mughal Empire to an end.

The British Indian Army (as it is referred to in Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}) fought in a number of local wars, notably in actions against tribesmen in Afghanistan and along its borders. During the Great Game, the Indian Army would have been responsible for providing the primary defence of the colony if the Russians decided to invade India. It also performed gallantly in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

The Indian Army had a number of colorful eccentricities. It was a complex and highly varied army reflecting both the Indian cultural labyrinth and the romantic British taste for quirkiness in their institutions. More specifically it smoothly adapted the famous British regimental system to harness local ethnic loyalties into the government's service. One controversial aspect of this was the [[ProudWarriorRace Martial Race]] theory which held that certain cultures provided better soldiers. Those who favored this claimed that these were people who grew up in tough places where they HadToBeSharp . Others, not unreasonably, claim to this day that it was simple bigotry, and some even claim that it was a GovernmentConspiracy to DivideAndConquer. Not all of this army was from "martial races" and some notable regiments like the [[TheEngineer Bombay, Bengal and Madras Sappers and Miners]] were from "non-martial" cultures. By UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the demand for CannonFodder was so high that even Untouchables were fighting and accounted themselves fairly well. This "dilution" does not seem to have hurt the efficiency of the Indian Army; arguably UsefulNotes/WorldWarII was India's [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome finest hour]] as well.[[note]]Overlooking the war-caused Bengal Famine, which claimed between two and four million lives, and the rise of rebellion that the British answered with aerial bombardment.[[/note]]

Its first captains were typical Elizabethan [[IntrepidMerchant warrior-merchants]] seeking to gain profit by honest trade or by [[{{Plunder}} more primitive methods]]. In the process they set up a number of trading posts with the permission of [[TheEmperor Grand Mogul]], that is the ruler of most of India. The catch was that the Grand Mogul's power was disintegrating in the face of European powers and internal pressure. Because of this The Company began to hire local mercenaries to defend its trading posts. From this seemingly innocuous policy UsefulNotes/TheRaj was slowly born. The next two hundred years were a long GambitPileup between The Company, other Europeans, the Grand Mogul, and the various local Asian powers.

During this time The Company evolved into a state of its own that often was more like an ally than a subject of the British crown. The East India Company's security guards evolved into a full fledged army; indeed one larger then most European armies and just as well trained and armed. Each time a [[EarthIsABattlefield major war]] broke out, this provided a convenient excuse to gobble up possessions of the enemy and not coincidentally, to conquer and [[YouWillBeAssimilated assimilate]] local powers accused of being to sympathetic toward said enemy. By [[FinalBattle Waterloo]], the Company and by extension Britain was the only power in the subcontinent.

After this came a number of small scale wars and counter-insurgencies and one big rebellion; the Sepoy Rebellion (Sepoy meaning "Indian Infantryman") or Great Mutiny in the mid-nineteenth century. This was caused by discontent in the ranks and a feeling that the Company's VastBureaucracy was unsympathetic to their cultural traditions. A number of regiments revolted and declared themselves for the Grand Mogul (long an anachronism but still a useful figurehead). This sparked a full scale civil war in which the loyalist company troops with the help of crown forces defeated the rebels in a bloody campaign marked by hard fighting and rather spectacular atrocities on both sides (notoriously the Cawnpore massacre by the rebels, and on the other side the practice of strapping captured rebels over the mouths of cannons and [[LudicrousGibs firing them]]). At this the British government decided that the Company had made a mess of things and should get back to trading tea and leave ruling to rulers. And the Company's army became the Queen's... or rather, the Empress's, as UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria was rather miffed at the thought that her daughter, as wife of [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Crown Prince Frederick]], would become an Empress and technically outrank her; UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli saw the India fiasco as a way to give the Queen an imperial title, making the new colony the ''Empire'' of India, allowing the Monarch to be an Empress.

* RivalTurnedEvil: At least from the perspective of the British Empire. [[LesCollaborateurs The Indian National Army]] in WorldWarTwo were a group of Indian nationalists who formed an army that had the goal of forming an independent country with the help of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany and ImperialJapan. It is not clear what kind of country it might have become. On one hand, Bose and his followers did have some authoritarian and Fascist tendencies. On the other hand, they also disregarded the complex race rules that characterized the British India and all ethnicities of India served equally among its ranks (British, on the other hand, carefully segregated various ethnic groups in India among its ranks and carefully drew distinction between "Martial" races and others.) 1946 trials of Indian National Army officers for treason at Delhi's Red Fort (with Jawahalal Nehru as the chief defense counsel) led to nationwide mutinies and protests throughout India where the secularists and religious, Hindus and Muslims, military and civilians stood hand in hand against British imperialism that effectively broke the British Empire on Indian subcontinent. In India, Bengal and Pakistan today, however, its leader Bose and the army itself are widely celebrated (one of the few things all three countries agree on); given the sort of company the INA kept, that may say something about [[TheEmpire the twilight years of British rule in India.]]

* MegaCorp: The East India Company grew so large from its trading that at times it appeared to be a government all its own, more allied with the British Empire than part of it.

After this came a number of small scale wars and counter-insurgencies and one big rebellion; the Sepoy Rebellion (Sepoy meaning "Indian Infantryman") or Great Mutiny in the mid-nineteenth century. This was caused by discontent in the ranks and a feeling that the Company's VastBureaucracy was unsympathetic to their cultural traditions. A number of regiments revolted and declared themselves for the Grand Mogul (long an anachronism but still a useful figurehead). This sparked a full scale civil war in which the loyalist company troops with the help of crown forces defeated the rebels in a bloody campaign marked by hard fighting and rather spectacular atrocities on both sides (notoriously the Cawnpore massacre by the rebels, and on the other side the practice of shooting captured rebels out of cannon). At this the British government decided that the Company had made a mess of things and should get back to trading tea and leave ruling to rulers. And the Company's army became the Queen's... or rather, the Empress's, as UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria was rather miffed at the thought that her daughter, as wife of [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Crown Prince Frederick]], would become an Empress and technically outrank her; UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli saw the India fiasco as a way to give the Queen an imperial title, making the new colony the ''Empire'' of India, allowing the Monarch to be an Empress.

The Indian Army had a number of colorful eccentricities. It was a complex and highly varied army reflecting both the Indian cultural labyrinth and the romantic British taste for quirkiness in their institutions. More specifically it smoothly adapted the famous British regimental system to harness local ethnic loyalties into the government's service. One controversial aspect of this was the [[ProudWarriorRace Martial Race]] theory which held that certain cultures provided better soldiers. Those who favored this claimed that these were people who grew up in tough places where they HadToBeSharp . Others, not unreasonably, claim to this day that it was simple bigotry, and some even claim that it was a GovernmentConspiracy to DivideAndConquer. Not all of this army was from "martial races" and some notable regiments like the [[TheEngineer Badras Sappers and Miners]] were from "non-martial" cultures. By UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the demand for CannonFodder was so high that even Untouchables were fighting and accounted themselves fairly well. This "dilution" does not seem to have hurt the efficiency of the Indian Army; arguably UsefulNotes/WorldWarII was India's [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome finest hour]] as well.[[note]]Overlooking the war-caused Bengal Famine, which claimed between two and four million lives, and the rise of rebellion that the British answered with aerial bombardment.[[/note]]

After this came a number of small scale wars and counter-insurgencies and one big rebellion; the Sepoy Rebellion (Sepoy meaning "Indian Infantryman") or Great Mutiny in the mid-nineteenth century. This was caused by discontent in the ranks and a feeling that the Company's VastBureaucracy was unsympathetic to their cultural traditions. A number of regiments revolted and declared themselves for the Grand Mogul(long an anachronism but still a useful figurehead). This sparked a full scale civil war in which the loyalist company troops with the help of crown forces defeated the rebels in a bloody campaign marked by hard fighting and rather spectacular atrocities on both sides (notoriously the Cawnpore massacre by the rebels, and on the other side the practice of shooting captured rebels out of cannon). At this the British government decided that the Company had made a mess of things and should get back to trading tea and leave ruling to rulers. And the Company's army became the Queen's... or rather, the Empress's, as UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria was rather miffed at the thought that her daughter, as wife of [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Crown Prince Frederick]], would become an Empress and technically outrank her; UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli saw the India fiasco as a way to give the Queen an imperial title, making the new colony the ''Empire'' of India, allowing the Monarch to be an Empress.

* BadassArmy : It had the advantage of drumming up volunteers from a large population which had a low standard of living and regarded soldiering as a highly honorable trade. Thus UsefulNotes/TheRaj could pick and choose and create one of the most effective armies in the world, arguably better on average then native British. Even the [[NazisWithGnarlyWeapons Wehrmacht]] was afraid of them.

* OldShame: The IndiansWithIglas regard some battle honours from this era (mainly those deemed to have been oppressive towards India or her neighbours) as "repugnant" and do not commemorate them. These include Carnatic, Assaye, and the Mysore and Punjaub campaigns.

After this came a number of small scale wars and counter-insurgencies and one big rebellion; the Sepoy Rebellion (Sepoy meaning "Indian Infantryman") or Great Mutiny in the mid-nineteenth century. This was caused by discontent in the ranks and a feeling that the Company's VastBureaucracy was unsympathetic to their cultural traditions. A number of regiments revolted and declared themselves for the Grand Mogul(long an anachronism but still a useful figurehead). This sparked a full scale civil war in which the loyalist company troops with the help of crown forces defeated the rebels in a bloody campaign marked by hard fighting and rather spectacular atrocities on both sides (notoriously the Cawnpore massacre by the rebels, and on the other side the practice of shooting captured rebels out of cannon). At this the British government decided that the Company had made a mess of things and should get back to trading tea and leave ruling to rulers. And the Company's army became the Queen's... or rather, the Empress's, as UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria was rather miffed at the thought that her daughter, as wife of [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Crown Prince Frederick]], would become an Empress and technically outrank her; Creator/BenjaminDisraeli saw the India fiasco as a way to give the Queen an imperial title, making the new colony the ''Empire'' of India, allowing the Monarch to be an Empress.