ABSTRACT

Warfare against Mysore involved the curtailing and then removal of a regime founded in 1761 upon military power and dependent for its existence upon military expansionism. It concerned a particular state under a particular dynasty in a particular region. The next phase of British expansionism was far more wide-ranging. Intervention in the Maratha confederacy had little to do with British interest in securing lines of trade or potential investments or the protection of debt obligations undertaken by individual princes. It flowed instead from geopolitical concerns and the quest for a more stable inter-state order. Undertaking intervention was not simply politically and diplomatically ambitious – it also involved a military challenge which, when met, showed how British military capability had been transformed in India since the 1780s.