Military labour markets in colonial India from the Company state to the Second World War

Recruiting, retaining, and disciplining military labour was crucial to the expansion of British colonial power in South Asia in the nineteenth century, as it had been in preceding centuries. The ability of the East India Company to monopolise 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.