ABSTRACT
The East India Company was theoretically a trading company whose principal export was in fact men. The East India Company was theoretically a trading company whose principal export was in fact men. The largest army was always in Bengal, or rather in Oudh, to guard the Northwest Frontier and to be paid by the nawab-vizier. The Indian Army was organized by its officers, not to make it an efficient fighting force, but to provide an equal chance for everybody to make his fortune. The importance of allowances and the jealousy with which they were guarded were clearly understood by Wellesley, who resisted the efforts of Dundas to reduce them. The best guarantee that everybody would have an equal chance to make his fortune and return in moderate style to England was promotion by seniority. Cornwallis decided that, until the Indian Army had been reorganized and retrained, it was incapable of fulfilling such a taxing role.
