ABSTRACT
In 1757 the English East India Company took its first step towards empire. At Plassey the highly professional European army under Colonel Robert Clive defeated the larger Indian forces under the reigning Bengal Nawab Siraj al-Daula. The battle of Plassey neatly fits the all too familiar idea that Indian 'tradition' was overwhelmed by European 'modernity'. Ahmad Shah Durrani is often depicted as the founder of modern Afghanistan. Ahmad Shah had served so long under Nadir Shah that it should be of no surprise that organized his army on similar lines as the Persian one. The guard of ghulams in the Durrani army served particularly well during Ahmad Shah's Indian campaigns. During the first three quarters of the eighteenth century, Indian armies were essentially armies of horsemen. A unit of five thousand horsemen assuredly makes more noise than an army of 100,000 men in Europe.
