Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State: Modernity, Hybridity,

and the Political Economy of Colonial India, circa 1750-1860

Peers, Douglas M.

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East,

Volume 27, Number 2, 2007, pp. 245-258 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

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Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State:
Modernity, Hybridity, and the Political
Economy of Colonial India, circa 1750– 1860

Douglas M. Peers

n 1844 the Mofussilite, an upcountry newspaper in India that was especially popular
with army officers and civilians, printed an essay in which was repeated a report from
the London Times lamenting the failure of Anglo-Indian society to take adequate notice
of recent financial and commercial reverses in Britain. According to the Times, this was no
mere oversight on the part of British expatriates in India; instead it was taken as proof that
the Raj had yet to break free from what it termed its “politico-military phase.”1 This juxtaposi-
tion of a modern commercial society against a military empire draws attention to a paradox
that underlies all efforts at understanding the nature and origins of colonial rule in India;
namely, how could a commercial operation like the East India Company, which was so linked
to the beginnings of precocious capitalism, not to mention the rise of Western dominance,
become so deeply and apparently perpetually embroiled in costly warfare and continue to
do so despite—or perhaps because of—the growth of modern industrial society in Britain?2
The tension identified by the Times also exposes the need to work through and move beyond
the long-standing and exaggerated distinction that historians have drawn between maritime
(read European and modern) empires and land-based (read Asian and premodern) empires,
a differentiation that lies at the heart of the military revolution theory. The fact that Britain’s of
d ies
Indian Empire was seen as being somehow out of step with metropolitan agendas illustrates e St u
ra ti v d
the shortcomings of the conventional view that ties British expansion to seaborne commercial pa an
m ri ca
imperatives. While the distinction between sea-based and land-based empires may have had Co , Af
A si a
some currency in the early modern era, a time when British expansion was undoubtedly tied u th st
So Ea
to naval power and driven by the search for overseas markets, the situation had grown more le
M idd
complex by the nineteenth century. By then, the British in India were very much a land-based th e
07 03
empire, their focus having shifted from naval to military power, and their revenues were in- 2 , 20 -0
o. 07
7, N 20
creasingly dependent on exploiting agrarian production and securing at least the tacit coop- l. 2 0 1x- ss
Vo 08
92 Pre
ty
eration of large magnates rather than expanding trade networks and striking alliances with 5 /1 r si
121 i ve
i 1 0. Un
local capitalists. In other words, the nineteenth-century Raj was very much a hybrid regime, do uk
e
D
by
07
20
©
In preparing this article, I benefited from discussions with a num- 2. As I discuss later, what has been termed “military fiscalism”
ber of friends and colleagues, notably Robert Travers and David continued to prosper in nineteenth-century India at the same
Washbrook, who suggested new ways of thinking about the time that, as Philip Harling and Peter Mandler have shown, it
relationship between ideology and economics in eighteenth- was being brought under check in post–Napoleonic War Britain.
century India. Philip Harling and Peter Mandler, “From Fiscal-Military State
to Laissez Faire State, 1760–1850,” Journal of British Studies 32
1. “An Essay on the Present State of Things,” Mofussilite, 10
March 1848.
(1993): 44–70.
245
246 one that straddled what has hitherto been de- fiscalism) as well as the constant demands for
clared to be quite distinctively different types of revenues to support a burgeoning military estab-
empire, namely, European and Asian imperial lishment, and the emphasis placed on using the
formations. As C. A. Bayly has argued, the East threat or application (usually in a very public
India Company “taxed and counted like a west- way) of military force as a means of securing po-
ern European state [and I would argue was the litical and strategic objectives. But such a func-
pioneer in many respects], but allowed many so- tionalist interpretation of the garrison state,
e cial functions to be monopolized by groups of while correctly drawing attention to some of its
ra ti v
pa indigenous administrators and landlords.”3 One more salient features, does not give adequate
m
Co explanation for this hybridity lies in the way in weight to the ideological and cultural context
f
ie so
tu d
which warfare conditioned the structures, prac- in which it emerged and which both informed
S
ia , tices, and ideologies of the colonial state, not to and was informed by it. The ways in which the
As
u th mention the resources at its disposal. As an ob- British had come to understand themselves and
So he
n dt
aa server ruefully noted in 1844, “It will, we think, their position in India, as well as their reading of
ri c
Af st be found that our century of dominion in the Indian society, played just as crucial a role in the
Ea
le East has been one of unintermitted [sic] war- origins and evolution of the garrison state as did
M idd
fare, or something very like it.” 4 many of the more tangible and obvious reasons
for this emphasis on the military, and these in
turn were played out in the financial operations
of the emerging colonial regime.
The situation that these commentators de-
But in employing such concepts as mili-
scribed—one of almost constant warfare—can
tary fiscalism and militarism, as well as the
be traced back to the eighteenth century. Of-
ideologies, institutions, and processes that de-
ficials in India in 1766 had come to realize, al-
fined each of them and the relationships among
beit somewhat obliquely, that their position in
them, one needs to take care not to repeat—or
India could be secured only by the application
even worse, reify—some of the conventional
of military force. The Court of Directors, the
juxtapositions that are invoked in efforts to map
highest authority in the East India Company,
out their consequences for India as well as in
were warned by their council in Bengal in 1766:
drawing comparisons with other kinds of state
“To us it evidently appears, there remained but
formation. Some of the more common of these
the alternative to advance as we have done and
dualities include Indian versus British, colonial
grasp at the whole power, or shrink back into
versus precolonial, and Western versus Eastern.
our primitive condition of simple merchants; to
Such oppositions ultimately contribute to the
abandon our possessions, disband our forces,
drawing of boundaries that in practice never ex-
and rest our future hopes on the clemency of
isted or at least never in as stark a form as some
Princes who will not easily forget or forgive the
historians have assumed. In particular, there is
superiority we have maintained.”5
an implicit fascination with an alleged disjunc-
This then was the scenario that set the con-
tion between the modern and the premodern,
text for the rise of the garrison state.6 In its simplest
which is all too often simply shorthand for the
formulation it is characterized by the pervasive
West versus the rest. For example, the tendency
presence of the military within the decision-
to ascribe militarism to the Ottomans while
making process, the priority given to the mili-
downplaying or even denying its role in the Brit-
tary in terms of resource allocation (military
ish Empire is itself proof positive of the power

3. C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–
1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 259.
4. “British India—Its State and Prospects,” Fraser’s
Magazine 30 (1844): 744.
5. Bengal to Court of Directors, 31 January 1766, Rt.
Hon. Charles F. Greville, British India Analyzed: The
Provincial and Revenue Establishments of Tippoo Sul-
taun and of Mahomedan and British Conquerors in
Hindostan, Stated and Considered in Three Parts (Lon-
don: E. Jeffery, 1793), 694.

6. Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon:

Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early-
Nineteenth Century India (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995).
of orientalist discourse, for liberal historiogra-
phy has always been distinctly uncomfortable
with the military, believing that force was a last
resort, employed only when other options had
failed. Only societies deemed inferior or stalled
along some universal evolutionary scale were
ones in which the military and its aristocratic
patrons had not been brought under civilian
control. By playing up the maritime and com-
mercial characteristics of the British Empire,
and thereby obscuring at least in part the influ-
ence exerted by the British army and its officer
class, historians have kept alive the binary argu-
ments long used to explain the rise of the West.
Historians ought instead to look at the middle
ground between these two positions, emphasiz-
ing the hybrid, contingent, and often malleable
forms of social, political, and military organi-
zation that were characteristic of most empires,
and the complex ideological and cultural con-
texts that both informed and challenged them.
Just as most if not all historians have come
to realize that capitalism (and by extension mo-
dernity) is not an inherently European devel-
opment, modern warfare, and I use the word
modern guardedly, also cannot be claimed as
uniquely European. As observed by Daniel Goff-
man, there has been a long-standing tendency
of seeing the Ottoman Empire as first and fore-
most a military empire (“long-lived Western
assumptions that the Ottoman state was thor-
oughly and relentlessly martial”7), in contrast
to the British Empire, which has customarily
been explained in constitutional and economic
terms. The concept of military fiscalism would
therefore seem to suggest an arena wherein
the two seemingly discrete histories can be en-
joined and provide valuable correctives to the
views commonly held of the two empires, for it
is within the world of Anglo-Indian militarism,
and its manifestation in military fiscalism, that
one can see most clearly that fundamental para-
dox of imperial rule—its ability to look simulta-
neously forward and backward. Military victo-
ries were signal proof of European superiority,
7. Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early
Modern Europe, New Approaches to European History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1.
8. John William Kaye, The Administration of the East
India Company: A History of Indian Progress (London:
Richard Bentley, 1853), 421.
confirmation that the British were destined to 247
rule, yet explanations of such victories blended
together the modern and antimodern, for suc-
cess was frequently accounted for by invoking
character traits that were rooted more in the
past than in the present. Moreover, military
service in India—especially the northwest fron-
tier—came to be viewed as an antidote to the
Douglas M. Peers
Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State
corrosive influence of modern society. And in
their efforts to meet the financial demands of
their army in India, the British yoked together
modern instruments of financial management
with regressive forms of revenue collection.
With such weight attached to the military,
it is not surprising that the army was given first
demands on the revenues of the colonial state.
But its influence did not end there, for the kinds
of fiscal strategies that were employed, and their
attendant revenue policies, were also shaped by
military imperatives and values. As one well-
placed contemporary commentator on Indian
affairs declared, “The military expenditure of
the East India Company furnishes the key to its
general policy.”8 In India it can be safely said
that the history of war was synonymous with the
history of its finances. Its ability to maintain an
army in peace as well as in the field, properly
equipped and regularly paid, was what distin-
guished it from its Indian rivals. Wars were also
thought of as paying propositions, with one
writer declaring that “some useless wars have
entailed a heavy debt on the Indian treasury,
but, on the other hand, the annexation of terri-
tory has produced a wonderful increase of rev-
enue.”9 In this respect, the difference between
the British and their Indian rivals (or other em-
pires such as that of the Ottomans) was never
that clear-cut, for wars were fought as much for
economic gain as they were for reasons of state
(which in turn further ensured that economic
planning was influenced by military interests).
By invoking the idea of the garrison state,
I want to stress not only the contingent nature of
this regime but also its hybrid character: hybrid
in its melding of European and Indian forms
9. “The English in India,” Bentley’s Miscellany 42
(1857): 343.
248 and practices and, just as important, hybrid in
its retention of premodern characteristics along-
side those normally associated with the advent
of modernity. The Raj might in some of its mili-
tary and economic ambitions be characterized
as modern, but it was decidedly premodern and
perhaps even antimodern in many of its social,
e cultural, and political aspirations. This tension
ra ti v
m pa was played out in its military and fiscal policies,
Co for the two were inseparable, creating the condi-
f
ie so
tu d
tions for a unique form of military fiscalism. One
S
ia , needs to ask what is inherently or uniquely mili-
As
u th tary about military fiscalism (and its close rela-
So he
n dt
aa tion the fiscal-military state). An image of heav-
ri c
Af st ily armed accountants comes to mind, but that is
Ea
le clearly insufficient for the purposes here. Many
M idd
discussions of military fiscalism or the fiscal-
military state have ironically tended to skip
over the military dimensions and have instead
tended to view the army’s role in functional
rather than in dynamic or discursive terms, em-
phasizing the army’s demand on state revenues
rather than its inputs into policy formulation
and contributions to ideological formation.
Military historians have also missed this crucial
influence of the military by failing to relate the
military with the financial and the cultural. As
one contemporary lamented, “Indian revenue
statistics have usually been regarded as any-
thing but an attractive subject of study.”10 Few
historians have taken up Innes Munro’s quip
that “bullocks, money and faithful spies are the
sinews of war in this country.”11 Historians, while
willing to quote such axioms, have rarely fol-
lowed them up, for bullocks are boring, money
is often difficult to track, and spies, while excit-
ing, are so elusive.
The foundations for a theory of military fiscal-
ism were laid at least a quarter century ago. At
that time Charles Tilly had declared that “war
made the state, and the state made war” and
William H. McNeill was showing how the rise of
the West could be best accounted for in terms
of its superior mobilization of resources in sup-
port of military activity.12 Overlapping with such
studies were works by Geoffrey Parker and oth-
ers who, drawing inspiration from Michael Rob-
erts, sought to explain the rise of absolutism in
Europe with references to advances in military
technology, which in turn forced states to devise
new mechanisms for revenue mobilization and
extraction. The works of Parker and Roberts
ushered into being the theory of the military
revolution, a historical concept as well as a heu-
ristic device that has been employed to explain
not simply why some states were stronger than
others but ultimately why the West was able to
extend its domination over the rest. While
there are some signs that the debate has of late
eased off, it nevertheless remains as one of the
few standardized concepts in modern history.13
Initially, at least, the theory hinged on the ar-
gument that the introduction of gunpowder so
dramatically changed military tactics that states
were forced to “modernize” so as to ensure that
sufficient resources in manpower and mate-
rial could be fielded to offset their opponents.
Heavy cavalry became less important, and new
and expensive fortifications were needed to
withstand the impact of cannons and mines.
The military revolution also had an impact at
sea: vessels outfitted with cannons preyed with
relative impunity on unarmed merchantmen.
But it was when the military revolution thesis
was extended to the wider world that its full po-
tential was realized, for in the words of Parker,
“the absolute or relative superiority of Western
weaponry and Western military organization”
is largely to account for European conquest.14
Scholars could now safely account for Western
superiority within technological terms that
seemingly promised objective and measurable
criteria for comparative study.

10. Frederick Hendriks, “On the Statistics of Indian
Revenue and Taxation,” Journal of the Statistical Soci-
ety of London 21 (1858): 223.
11. Innes Munro, Narrative of the Military Operations
on the Coromandel Coast against the Combined Forces
of the French, Dutch, and Hyder Ally Cawn from the
Year 1780 to the Peace of 1784, in a Series of Letters
(London, 1789), 160.
12. Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of the Nation 14. Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military
States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2nd ed.
University Press, 1975), 31; William H. McNeill, The (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 115.
Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and So-
ciety since AD 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982).
13. See the recent review of the idea and its applica-
tions in Clifford J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution
Debate (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995).
 The military revolution theory has cer-
tainly proved to be very useful, if for no other
reason than the illumination it has cast on the
interplay between military, political, and eco-
nomic history. Yet there are some potentially se-
rious deficiencies. It can, for one thing, succumb
to technological determinism, making scientific
progress and its application the driving motor
behind historical developments. It can also rely
too much on hindsight by underplaying the
extent to which conflicts between Western and
non-Western armies were much more closely
fought than either contemporaries or historians
were or are willing to admit.15 The comments of
the future Duke of Wellington, Arthur Welles-
ley, after the battle of Assaye, which he declared
to be the hardest-won battle of his career, sug-
gest that he like many of his contemporaries was
much more impressed with his opponents than
have been several generations of historians who
with the benefit of hindsight and smug in the
knowledge that Europe did conquer much of
the world have concluded that Europeans were
somehow innately superior.16 Nor can technol-
ogy itself always explain the outcome of par-
ticular battles or campaigns, and it often raises
more questions than it answers. G. V. Scammell
has called into question the extent to which con-
quest in Asia was predicated on military superi-
ority.17 John K. Thornton’s work on Portuguese
forces in Africa reveals a number of important
limitations to Western military technology.18 So
too has George Raudzens in his reappraisal of
the early stages of the conquest of the Ameri-
cas.19 Studies by P. J. Marshall and B. P. Lenman
have shown that technological advantages were
often short-lived and, more important, largely
confi ned to maritime warfare. 20 In other situ-
ations, one finds that a technological edge was
not translated into military victory. Operations
15. An excellent example of the way in which the
historiography of colonial warfare needs to be re-
thought is offered in James Belich, The New Zealand
Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Con-
flict (Montreal: McGill-Queens Press, 1989).
16. Randolf G. S. Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Cam-
paigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Con-
trol of the South Asian Military Economy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003).
17. G. V. Scammell, The First Imperial Age: European
Overseas Expansion, c. 1400–1715 (London: Unwin
Hyman, 1989).
such as those against the Burmese and the 249
Nepalese were fraught with difficulties and em-
barrassments for the British, yet in both cases
one fi nds that technology was clearly tilted in
favor of the British (Burma saw the first use of
a steam-powered naval vessel in wartime—the
Diana). But technology could not guarantee vic-
tory. In Burma and elsewhere in Southeast Asia,
Douglas M. Peers
Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State
local rulers found that bamboo stockades could
absorb many hits from round shot without crum-
bling. Bamboo stockades and hit-and-run tactics
worked very well in frustrating British designs,
leaving an extremely irate British commander
to complain that he could win the war if only
the Burmese would conduct themselves accord-
ing to the principles of military science.21
This is not to say that proponents of this
model routinely insist that the West is superior
to the East (or the North to the South); they are
often quick to point to successful adaptations
and innovations in the non-Western world. But
there is a risk of confusing assimilation with in-
novation. Jos Gommans has shown how military
innovations in India were not exclusively inspired
by the Europeans. Influence can also be traced
to the Ottomans and the Safavids, while the
Durranis also introduced some novel tactics.22
Nevertheless, the parameters of the debate are
all too often conceived of in European terms,
and even those who chafe at the European bias,
and who are committed to overturning the more
glaring manifestations of Eurocentrism, often
unwittingly find themselves entrapped within
it. The military revolution model requires uni-
versality to function, but it can have universality
only if one accepts that all armies are function-
ally and symbolically equivalent.
While discontent mounted over simple
technological explanations, there was neverthe-
less widespread agreement that European-style
18. John K. Thornton, “The Art of War in Angola, 1575– 21. Peers, Mars and Mammon, 161.
1680,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30
22. Jos Gommans, “Indian Warfare and Afghan Inno-
(1988): 360–78.
vation during the Eighteenth Century,” Studies in His-
19. George Raudzens, “Military Revolution or Mari- tory 11 (1995): 261–80; Gommans, Mughal Warfare:
time Evolution? Military Superiorities or Transporta- Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700
tion Advantages as Main Causes of European Colo- (London: Routledge, 2002).
nial Conquests to 1788,” Journal of Military History 63
(1999): 631–41.
20. B. P. Lenman, “The Weapons of War in Eighteenth-
Century India,” Journal of the Society for Army Histori-
cal Research 46 (1968): 33–43; P. J. Marshall, “Western
Arms in Maritime Asia in the Early Phases of Expan-
sion,” Modern Asian Studies 14 (1980): 13–28.
250 armies had to have some kind of advantage over
their opponents, otherwise how could battle-
field success be explained? It was at this point
that Tilly’s earlier insights into the role of armies
in the formation of the modern state were rein-
troduced into the equation. Rather than dwell
on technical differences, the emphasis instead
e switched to the ability of Europeans to raise and
ra ti v
m pa maintain military forces in such numbers and
Co in such a state of efficiency that they could over
f
ie so
tu d
time overwhelm their opponents. Before the
S
ia , rise of the modern welfare state, modernity—at
As
u th least in political terms—can be understood as
So he
n dt
aa a combination of ideological and institutional
ri c
Af st developments that facilitated the efficient pros-
Ea
le ecution of war, for that was the principal preoc-
M idd
cupation of the state. In eighteenth-century Brit-
ain, between 60 and 70 percent of total income
was going to the army and navy during time of
war, falling to 40 percent in peacetime. 23 And
debt servicing, itself a legacy of warfare, took
up much of the remainder, as taxes were insuffi-
ciently flexible to meet the rapidly growing costs
of war; however, they were elastic enough to en-
able the government to meet its debts.
Britain’s capacity to mobilize increasing
amounts of human and financial resources has
led some to conclude that the British regime
had by the late eighteenth century become a
“fiscal-military state.” Roland Quinault, Patrick
O’Brien, Philip Harling, Peter Mandler, C. A.
Bayly, and John Brewer have shown not only just
how sophisticated British taxation had become
by the end of the eighteenth century but that the
system was a crucial determinant in their rise to
political, military, and economic dominance.24
Linda Colley has taken this one step further
by looking at the social and cultural ramifica-
tions of this Second One Hundred Years War
and concluding that it was the experience of
war that made Britain, for “it [was] largely de-
fined . . . through fighting.”25 Premodern states
also demonstrated an affinity for war, but in
such cases the state was the natural extension
of the sovereign and was conducted by a range
of intermediaries whose links to the sovereign
were all too often defi ned in personal rather
than fiscal terms.
Military fiscalism did not simply reflect a
government’s capacity to wage war; the powers
it took upon itself to mobilize resources meant
that it penetrated more deeply into society than
had its predecessors. It had to create offices and
committees to oversee its expanded authority.
Hence, the bureaucracy of the modern state,
which was one of its chief determinants, was
largely a response to the increasingly deperson-
alized nature of rule, the growing economic
complexity of contemporary societies, and the
technical and financial demands initiated by
the transformations in its military organization.
Consequently, ledgers and logistics took prece-
dence over lances and longbows. 26 Wellesley’s
victories in southern and central India were in-
conceivable had he not been able to raise the
necessary monies for his campaigns and had he
not tapped so effectively into indigenous logisti-
cal practices. By way of contrast, contemporary
observers highlighted the logistical weaknesses
of their Indian opponents, concluding in one
instance that “the loose organization, uncertain
and long-deferred payments, and feudal inde-
pendence of parts, in the native armies previ-
ously existing, were among the chief causes of
their inefficiency.”27
Yet the British domestic state was never
as militarized as were its colonial offshoots. In
Britain, while the state became more expert at
meeting military requirements, it was also quick
to wind down its wartime establishment during

23. Lawrence Stone, ed., An Imperial State at War: 25. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–
Britain from 1689–1815 (London: Routledge, 1994), 9. 1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 9.

24. C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire
and the World, 1730–1830 (London: Longman, 1989);
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and
the English State, 1688–1783 (London: Allen and Unwin,
1989); Jos Gommans, “The Silent Frontier of South Asia,
A.D. 1100–1800,” Journal of World History 9 (1998):
1–23; Harling and Mandler, “From Fiscal-Military
State to Laissez Faire State”; Patrick O’Brien and
Roland Quinault, eds., The Industrial Revolution and
British Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
26. Unfortunately there has been little recent work
on the logistics of the Indian army. But see Randolf
G. S. Cooper, “Beyond Beasts and Bullion: Economic
Considerations in Bombay’s Military Logistics, 1803,”
Modern Asian Studies 33 (1999): 159–83; and Lorenzo
M. Crowell, “Logistics in the Madras Army circa 1830,”
War and Society 10 (1992): 1–33.
27. Chapman, “India and Its Finances,” Westminster
Review 4 (1853): 192.
those brief periods of peace. In India, while
armies were reduced following periods of war,
they were never reduced by the same degree
that was common in Europe. Military charges
remained high. According to Henry Lawrence,
“The expense of the army, including the dead-
weight, is eleven millions a year, or nearly one-
half the revenue of India.”28 Military charges in
1834–35 were £6,904,263 (or 59 percent of net
charges); by 1851 they had reached £9,933,545
(or 60 percent of net charges). Military charges
had grown by 44 percent in this period. But rev-
enues grew only by 35 percent.29 The average of
four years’ expenditure before 1857—all funda-
mentally years of peace, for the expedition to
Persia was not that expensive—conforms to this
pattern; military and naval charges consumed
nearly half of net revenues. A further 7 percent
was debt servicing. 30 In addition, military costs
were often hidden within public works, for much
of the infrastructure built by the British, roads
and later railroads, for example, had a military
purpose.
Moreover, in Britain there was the long-
standing fear of a standing army with which
to contend. There were fewer checks and bal-
ances in India against rising military influence,
for the European population there, with a few
exceptions, accepted their very tenuous grip on
India, a belief that would only be confirmed for
them by the events of 1857–58. Officially the
government and the East India Company were
opposed to expansion and repeatedly urged
their officials to eschew conquest. But the com-
pany never seriously pressed its officials to relin-
quish gains, and it also provided the forces with
which to protect its trade against the French
and other real or imagined threats. Its officials
in India took advantage of communication lag
and vague instructions about their responsibil-
ity to protect the company’s territories and to
maintain its forces in sufficient strength to head
off any combination of threats.
Secure frontiers were not the only strate-
gic imperatives that informed military policy in
28. Henry Lawrence, “The Indian Army,” Calcutta Re-
view 26 (1856): 185.
29. Appendix to Report from the Select Committee
on Indian Territories, Parliamentary Papers 10 (1852):
276–79.
30. Hendriks, “Indian Revenue and Taxation,” 243.
India. Equally important was the widely shared 251
belief that the best way of heading off any com-
bination of internal and external threats was to
ensure that the willingness and capacity of the
British to use force was never questioned. Hence,
while there might not have been an officially
sanctioned ideology of expansion, for much of
the period up to 1858, institutionally, culturally,
Douglas M. Peers
Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State
and ideologically there was a predilection for the
use of force, and when this was coupled to the fi-
nancial appetites of the burgeoning army there
was often little alternative to expansion. This
is not to say that conquest was inevitable. But
as one commentator reflected, “During these
sixty years India has had Governors-general
of all qualifications and temperaments, yet very
few of them have avoided war.”31
The emphasis placed on the military as
the ultimate arbiter of colonial rule was bol-
stered by contemporary readings of Indian so-
ciety and history. Military values were deeply
ingrained in North Indian society and were
manifested in codes of conduct, dress, and even
domestic architecture.32 The British were sensi-
tive to such customs. For example, Henry Law-
rence declared that “the land . . . has for nearly a
thousand years been held by the sword, and . . .
has as often changed hands, as that sword has
been blunted, or the grasp that held it relaxed;
the land . . . knows no principality of longer
standing than our own (in recent memory).”33
Another author reminded his readers that “in
the East, aggrandizement is justified as a manly,
honourable and legitimate course of policy: in
the West this principle is restrained and modi-
fied by laws and manners, and disguised under
a variety or pretexts, which deceive the vulgar,
and very often those who make use of them.”34
Such understandings had a long pedigree:
nearly one hundred years before, Robert Clive
was insisting that “Hindostan is accustomed to
a military government; an army may be kept in
discipline and protect the rights of the natives
without exciting their jealousy; a judicious use of
our resources ought to render the British arms
31. Chapman, “India and Its Finances,” 180. 34. A. White, Considerations on the State of British
India (Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute, 1822), 128.
32. Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and
Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1998), ix.
33. Henry Lawrence, “Military Defence of Our Empire
in the East,” Calcutta Review 2 (1844): 35.
252 paramount in India; but luxury and abuses have
pervaded both the military and civil service.”35
Even critics of the East India Company and its
policies subscribed to such views. One reviewer
in the Westminster Review noted with regret: “Let
it be remembered that, both within and without
the general confines of India, there are king-
e doms and clans whose people habitually resort
ra ti v
m pa to force and deadly strife on what we deem light
Co occasions.”36
f
ie so
tu d
This emphasis led to the widespread cus-
S
ia , tom of casting India in largely military terms.
As
u th John Lawrence reminded Lord Dalhousie that
So he
n dt
aa “public opinion is essentially military in India.
ri c
Af st Military views, feelings and interests are there-
Ea
le fore paramount. If matters go well, the credit
M idd
rests with the military, if they go wrong, the
blame is thrown on the civil power. The views of
the Commander in Chief are essentially those
of his cloth, perhaps a good deal exaggerated,
but still their views.”37 It is not surprising then
that a contemporary writer could complain that
“we are too much inclined, in these Western lat-
itudes, to regard India simply as a great camp.
The very name has recently suggested to us little
but gigantic visions of tented fields and armed
legions, with all the glittering and gorgeous
panoply, the ‘pride, pomp, and circumstance of
glorious war.’”38
With the need for vigorous and responsive mili-
tary forces so widely conceded, it is not surpris-
ing that the military came to dominate much of
the political culture of the early colonial state.
Its personnel were to be found throughout Brit-
ish India, and even when military officers were
not employed in civil or political functions, mil-
itary values and priorities often informed the
operations of such departments. For example,
the widespread practice of uniting the respon-
sibilities of the collector and the magistrate in
one person has unmistakable military echoes
35. Robert Clive to Court of Directors, April 1765, Gre-
ville, British India Analyzed, 812.
36. Chapman, “India and Its Finances,” 180.
37. John Lawrence to Dalhousie, 20 September 1850,
MSS Eur F90/3, Oriental India Office Collections.
38. John William Kaye, “Society in India,” Bentley’s
Miscellany 31 (1852): 242.
about it. This can be glimpsed, for example, in
Robert Needham Cust’s defense of the practice,
in which he argues that while “it is true, that in
a free country, such a degree of centralization
is not desirable, and the evil effects of such a
system are shewn in France, where liberties are
periodically lost by the over-weening power of
the Executive Government . . . it is a melancholy
fact, which it may be as well to admit, that a re-
ally efficient and responsible form of absolute
government, is the best system for the rule of an
Asiatic country.”39 Not only did military person-
nel often find themselves performing civil func-
tions, but government offices often blended
military and civil duties. In his evidence before
the Select Committee struck to look into mili-
tary reorganization in the aftermath of the In-
dian Rebellion of 1857–58, Charles Trevelyan
urged that the police be restructured: they were
to remain under civil authority but with a “quasi
military organization.”40 Lord Ellenborough
drew similar lessons from the experience of the
Indian Rebellion, claiming that “the best educa-
tion for every civil servant in India is service in
the native army.”41
This is not to say that the military’s grip
on policy making was complete or passed un-
challenged. There were certainly those who
questioned the army’s preeminent position in
Anglo-Indian society, just as there were many
officials who believed that British rule, if it were
to survive in the long run, must establish a more
substantial and persuasive claim to legitimacy.
The power and influence of the military was also
slowly diluted by the growing population of Brit-
ish expatriates who were not directly affiliated
with the army, for the number of Europeans in
India nearly doubled between 1830 and 1850.
But even such groups could not ignore strategic
imperatives, and many of those who did try were
drawn back into mainstream Anglo-Indian soci-
ety by the shockwaves unleashed by the Indian
Rebellion. In common with many other liberal
intellectuals, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen made
39. Robert Needham Cust, “Collector of Revenues in
the North West Provinces,” Calcutta Review 23 (1854):
138–39.
40. Meredith Townsend, Annals of Indian Admin-
istration (Serampore, India: Baptist Mission Press,
1859), 3:253.
41. Ibid., 3:258.
an exception of India when dealing with the lib-
erals’ cherished belief that moral and legal au-
thority was separate from and superior to physi-
cal force. Memories of the rebellion, plus a long
history of viewing Indian rule as dependent on
a show of force, led him to argue in an article in
Nineteenth Century in October 1883 that British
rule was “essentially an absolute government,
founded not on consent but on conquest.”42
Another characteristic of military fiscalism
in India that needs to be born in mind is that
it was not a purely colonial invention. Some of
the traits normally identified with military fis-
calism—like those associated with the military
revolution—are not exclusively European. As
recent scholarship has forcefully and helpfully
suggested, precolonial states in India were never
as stagnant as much scholarship would have one
believe. An earlier tradition of historical narra-
tives depicted colonial rule as a massive and sud-
den rupture, suggesting that Plassey was engi-
neered by the British, who were eager to supplant
quickly Indian rulers and then use the resulting
land revenues to bolster their commercial domi-
nation over Asian trade. This then sent shock-
waves into the Indian economy, which worsened
as the British cranked up their demands.
In hindsight, the British did usher in a
transformation. But changes were also being
initiated by Indian states that were adjusting
their political and military systems so as to try
and gain the upper hand over their rivals, which
included but were not restricted to the British.
Such regimes also exhibited hybrid character-
istics. While they were careful to retain at least
the forms of Mogul rule, they were developing
much more efficient means of revenue extrac-
tion, whereby earlier systems in which an aristoc-
racy was given land grants in return for military
service were replaced with methods of revenue
farming that directed revenues back to the
ruler, from which he could then pay for military
services.43 This also allowed rulers to mortgage
42. James Fitzjames Stephen, “Foundations of the
Government of India,” Nineteenth Century 80 (1883):
541–68. See also Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and
Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal
Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
43. David Washbrook, “India, 1818–1860: The Two
Faces of Colonialism,” in The Oxford History of the Brit-
ish Empire: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew Porter
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 395–421.
anticipated revenues in deals struck with large 253
Indian capitalists like Jagat Seth. The increased
certainty of funding enabled them to equip and
discipline standing armies that were akin to
those normally associated with European forms
of military organization.44 In Mysore, Haider
Ali introduced major military reforms, some
of which were borrowed from the preceding
Douglas M. Peers
Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State
Wodeyar state.45 Ranjit Singh’s Punjab also exhib-
ited characteristics similar to those normally as-
sociated with the fiscal-military state. Ironically,
such regimes created crucial footholds for the
British. They were better able to access Indian
resources largely because their competitors’ po-
litical, administrative, and financial structures
were already set up and functioning in ways that
the British could comprehend and eventually
co-opt. These included standing armies, cash-
based revenue systems, sophisticated banking
networks, and a legal infrastructure. In the case
of the Punjab, the British were able to exploit
preexisting foundations, further militarizing its
administration, which in turn would have conse-
quences for present-day Pakistan. But a word of
caution is in order—the British did not simply
assimilate such systems wholesale. Bayly’s warn-
ing that “the Company’s regime was evidently
something more than a white Mughal Empire”
must be borne in mind.46
What the British fiscal-military state in
India did have in common with its Indian op-
ponents was a very restricted revenue base. As
one observer noted, “If in England we become
involved in war, we immediately lay on addi-
tional taxes to meet the additional expense. In
India, with vastly greater liability to war, we can
do no such thing; however urgent the occasion,
the income for at least the two-thirds which
arise from the land tax and, indeed, for much
more, must remain very nearly as it is.”47 Taxes
in India were even more inelastic than those in
Britain, with the added challenge that the Brit-
ish had only the most imperfect understanding
44. Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: Tra- 46. C. A. Bayly, “The British Military-Fiscal State and
dition and Transition in Northern India, 1770–1830 Indigenous Resistance: India, 1750–1820,” in Stone,
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995). An Imperial State at War, 324.
45. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Penumbral Visions: Mak- 47. Chapman, “India and Its Finances,” 195.
ing Politics in Early Modern South India (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2002). See also Irfan
Habib, ed., Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and
Modernization under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan
(Delhi: Tulika, 1999).
254 of the economy that they were coming to domi-
nate. Their ability to tap into Indian revenues
was further frustrated by their own limited
resources as well as their apprehensions about
what might happen should they misstep. Unlike
Britain, where indirect taxation proved to be a
successful financial strategy, the British in India
e were largely dependent on land revenues. In the
ra ti v
m pa words of one official, “There are fi fty different
Co ways in which the English tax-gatherer may get
f
ie so
tu d
at the poor man. But in India the approaches
S
ia , to the mud hut of the labourer are few; and
As
u th the tax-gatherer must advance by them or keep
So he
n dt
aa away altogether; he has been going a long time
ri c
Af st along the same beaten roads.”48 The annual rev-
Ea
le enue of the Mogul Empire has been estimated
M idd
at £30 million per year. The East India Com-
pany initially acquired through conquests in
the eighteenth century the rights to about £6
million of revenue-producing lands. Its princi-
pal opponents, the Marathas and Mysore, had
secured the rights to approximately £5.7 million
and £2.4 million, respectively.49
Yet these figures do not reveal the full
story, and here Bayly’s caveat cited above is borne
out—the British were generally more successful
in realizing such revenues, for they were able
to deploy more efficient mechanisms for secur-
ing their claims. British land revenue policy has
long been a popular field for historical enquiry,
and British actions and their consequences have
been extensively discussed elsewhere.50 An ear-
lier emphasis on excessive taxation demand as a
consequence of colonial rule and the concomi-
tant rural impoverishment has been revised.
But according to P. J. Marshall, Rajat Datta, and
others, the difference was not so much in ap-
petite as in the efficacy of tax extraction. Mar-
shall has estimated that tax demands grew by
20 percent in Bengal between 1757 and 1793.
48. Kaye, Administration of the East India Company,
421.
49. Rajat Kanta Ray, “Indian Society and the Estab-
lishment of British Supremacy, 1765–1818,” in The
Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth
Century, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), 517.
Such demands did take place in the midst of
profound transformations, a crippling famine
in 1769–70, and fluctuating prices, including
a prolonged depression in the 1790s that in-
creased the real burden on cultivators. Datta
has taken this argument further, suggesting
that the impact should be seen more in terms of
increased commercialization than in terms of a
simple increase in tax demands. The financial
demands of the army, when coupled with the
East India Company’s commercial imperatives,
encouraged the company to develop and refine
instruments of financial management. The ac-
counting procedures of the company were until
the mid-nineteenth century far in advance of
those used by the British government. And in
choosing between predictability and reliability,
the revenue systems introduced into Bengal by
the Permanent Settlement of 1793 (usually re-
ferred to as the zamindari system) was intended
to ensure reliability in such a way as to allow
for better forecasting, but more importantly to
guarantee a steady revenue stream that would
reassure potential lenders. Quicker and more
reliable access to revenue sources enabled the
British to tap into indigenous credit networks
more effectively. The British were also deter-
mining their revenue demands with security in
mind, for they wished to co-opt or at least pla-
cate potential sites of resistance by trying to win
over key sectors of rural society.
Revenue from land was complemented by
other revenue streams. Of these, the most im-
portant in quantitative terms was the salt tax,
perhaps the most famous regressive tax used
by the British in India. But from a purely fiscal
point of view, it yielded a lot of revenue at com-
parably little cost (about £1 million a year) and
also managed to provide employment. Opium
was also a growing source of income for the Brit-
50. See, e.g., Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colo-
nial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770, New Cambridge
History of India, vol. 3, no. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993); Rajat Datta, Society, Economy,
and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal,
c. 1760–1800 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000); Ranajit
Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the
Idea of the Permanent Settlement (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1995); P. J. Marshall, Bengal: The Brit-
ish Bridgehead, Eastern India; 1740–1828, New Cam-
bridge History of India, vol. 2, no. 2 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988).
ish, realizing £169,321 in 1785 and £839,809 in
1810–11 and rising to £2,750,349 in 1850–51. 51
But opium proceeds fluctuated quite violently
and therefore could not be counted on to yield
as constant a supply as land taxes. There was
also a range of other sources, such as post of-
fice, excise, and mint duties. But little was often
realized from such sources, for they often cost
was little more than two years’ income, which 255
one contemporary estimated was less than most
other national debts. 57 Prevailing interest rates
would remain at these levels up until the Indian
Rebellion, and even the catastrophic shocks of
that event did not seriously imperil the compa-
ny’s credit rating. In 1856 the biggest slice of the
Bengal debt (which was £44 million of the total

Douglas M. Peers

Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State

as much to administer as they produced. Town
levies were initially assessed for local needs:
under the British, they were subsumed into gen-
eral revenues. But they were applied unevenly
and inconsistently.52
The key to military fiscalism in India, how-
ever, lay in the East India Company’s ability to
fund its liabilities through loans, which were is-
sued at very favorable rates of interest. Not sur-
prisingly, periods of expansion were also periods
of deficit finances (1814–19, 1823–28, 1838–48,
and 1853–58). 53 Between 1814 and 1828, 70
percent of the government’s deficit was under-
written by loans; the remainder was covered
by internal indebtedness or advances from the
company’s commercial operations. By 1814 the
prevailing interest rate was 6 percent; despite a
series of expensive wars in Nepal, Central India,
and Burma, the rate fifteen years later still
ranged between 5 and 6 percent. 54 Across the
same period, debt servicing charges dropped
from around 15 percent in 1815 to 11 percent
in 1825, spiking over the next three years be-
cause of the extraordinary costs of the Burma
war, and then declining to around 10 percent.55
The Indian debt in 1834 stood at £35 million,
carrying an annual charge of £1,778,000 a year.
But because the rate of interest in 1834 was just
over 5 percent, the cost of the debt had risen
more slowly than had the total amount of debt.
The total debt had grown by 60 percent, but
debt-servicing charges had increased only by
42 percent. 56 Put another way, the Indian debt
Indian debt of £50 million) enjoyed an interest
rate of 4 percent, or £2,140,577 a year. 58 The
crisis of 1857–58 not surprisingly pressed hard
on Indian capital. The company had to raise
its rates, but not by much—a 5 percent loan
opened in 1857 realized nearly £4 million in
India by early 1858, which when combined with
another offering at 4 percent raised the Indian
debt from £50 million to £56 million.59
Deficit fi nancing contributed in critical
ways to the consolidation of colonial rule. Un-
like the Ottoman Empire, which strove to build
up a surplus in the eighteenth century and was
willing to cut costs to do so, the East India Com-
pany, taking advantage of favorable rates of in-
terests and having a more centralized revenue
collection and distribution system, not only
could raise the money to keep a large army dur-
ing periods of peace as well as war but could also
strengthen its links with indigenous capital.60 It
was estimated that by 1830 about 25.5 percent
of the Indian debt was owned by Indians.61 In
a series of loan issues of the 1820s, Indian sub-
scribers contributed about 25 percent of the
paid-up capital. The big spike was in 1825–26
when it reached 47 percent, the result of pres-
sure placed on Indian princes. This practice of
turning to Indian investors led one writer to de-
scribe the British with some justice as “agents
of native capital.”62 Shubhra Chakrabarti has
argued that Indian middlemen in Bengal were
able to carve out a wider space of autonomy
than has been customarily believed and that

51. Pramanath Banerjea, Indian Finances in the Days
of the Company (London: Macmillan, 1928), 207.
52. Tarasankar Banerjee, Internal Markets of India
(Calcutta: Academic Publishers, 1966), 6.
53. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Financial Foundations
of the British Raj: Men and Ideas in the Post-mutiny
Period of Reconstruction of Indian Public Finances,
1858–1872 (Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
1971), 3.
54. Memorandum on the Indian Debt, 1828, Public
Record Office (PRO) 30/12/32/1 (Law Papers), National
Archive, London.
55. Statistics compiled from Select Committee on
the East India Company, Parliamentary Papers, 1831–
32, 10, pt. 1, app. 4, and Memorandum on Indian Fi-
nances, n.d., PRO 30/12/32/1 (Law Papers), National
Archive, London.
56. Hendriks, “Indian Revenue and Taxation,” 255.
57. Chapman, “India and Its Finances,” 179.
58. Hendriks, “Indian Revenue and Taxation,” 249.
59. Ibid., 253.
60. P. H. H. Vries, “Governing Growth: A Compara-
tive Analysis of the Role of the State in the Rise of the
West,” Journal of World History 13 (2002): 67–138.
61. Select Committee on the East India Company,
Parliamentary Papers 10 (1831–32), pt. 1, xx.
62. George Campbell, Modern India (London: John
Murray, 1852).
256 they were not swiftly and completely circum-
vented by European competitors. Indian mer-
chants therefore not only facilitated conquest;
they also frustrated conquest.63 The bazaar was
a crucial interstice between British and Indian
finances, for it was there that the British turned
for short-term fi nancing and for assistance in
e moving monies about India.64
ra ti v
m pa But Indians did not necessarily always
Co give willingly to such loans. An element of co-
f
ie so
tu d
ercion was used, especially on Indian princes,
S
ia , who were told that subscription to company
As
u th loans would be taken as proof of commitment
So he
n dt
aa to their alliance. In 1825, for example, the ex-
ri c
Af st traordinary expenses incurred by the Burma
Ea
le war led the company to raise nearly £11 million
M idd
at 5 percent. They also went to the Nawab of
Awadh and secured nearly £2 million more at
5 percent and another £1 million taken from
a number of lesser princes. While the interest
rate was the same, the terms by which it was to
be paid differed in the cases of Indian princes.
In some cases the interest was to be paid in the
form of stipends or pensions to named individu-
als, giving the ruler a means to provide for his
followers. 65 By extracting loans from Indians,
the British not only tried to draw them more
closely into their orbit but also tried with mixed
success to avoid pressing too hard on the lim-
ited supply of British capital. Most of this was
in the hands of agency houses, whose financial
health was always somewhat suspect.
Another example of how well integrated
strategic and financial affairs had become
under the British can be seen in their alliances
with surviving Indian rulers. Subsidiary alli-
ances were a key component of military fi scal-
ism, for they enhanced the company’s military
position while deflecting the costs onto its al-
lies. These alliances normally entailed a British
promise to provide military protection in the
form of a subsidiary force in return for a guar-
anteed cut of the ruler’s revenues. For example,
in 1787, in response to threats from Mysore, a
63. Shubhra Chakrabarti, “Collaboration and Resis-
tance: Bengal Merchants and the English East India
Company, 1757–1833,” Studies in History 10 (1994):
105–29.
64. Lakshmi Subramanian, “Arms and the Merchant:
The Making of the Bania Raj in Late Eighteenth-
Century India,” South Asia 24 (2001): 18.
subsidiary arrangement with the ruler of Tanjur
was signed, obliging Tanjur to provide a subsidy
of four lakhs of pagodas per year, unless war
broke out, when four-fi fths of its revenue was
demanded. In return, his tribute to the Nawab
of the Carnatic was forgotten.66 The contingent
force in Hyderabad cost around thirty lakhs a
year, or around one-seventh of the state’s gross
revenues. By 1827 the value of cessions and sub-
sidies had reached £4.5 million per year after
deducting the costs of collecting these revenues
(such collection costs ranged between 23 and 47
percent, with most falling around 35 percent).
But these were not always as profitable as the
British had predicted, for in reality they often
exaggerated the revenue potential of territories
that had come under their control.
While many contemporaries were quick to
praise the company for its ability to finance its
military operations with considerable sophisti-
cation, there were also a good number who were
quick to appreciate that these came at a signifi-
cant cost. Military fiscalism enabled the British
to mobilize and maintain an impressive military
force, but it proved to be a considerable drag on
the Indian economy, frustrating economic devel-
opment at key junctures by limiting the govern-
ment’s financial options and by absorbing capital
and resources that might have been put to more
productive use. Unlike white settler colonies,
where economic development was not hindered
by having to bear much by way of military costs,
colonies of conquest—especially India—found
much of their wealth siphoned off to support-
ing the military forces, and hence the reality in
British India, at least in terms of expenditure
patterns, was not that much different from
previous regimes. While some Indian groups
stood to benefit—suppliers, financiers, and the
sepoys, who at least until the mid-nineteenth
century enjoyed wages that compared favor-
ably with what was available within the larger
society—the overall gains were limited. Critics
charged that military expenditure came at the
65. Select Committee on the East India Company,
Parliamentary Papers 10 (1832): 211–12.
66. John Clunes, Historical Sketch of the Princes of
India: Stipendiary, Subsidiary, Protected, Tributary,
and Feudatory (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1833),
50–51.
cost of investment in infrastructure, thereby
doing little to benefit Indian society or pro-
spective British investors. For observers like
John William Kaye, the frequency with which
the governments of India resorted to war was
largely the reason why so few reforms had taken
hold. Wars cost money, and many wars cost a
lot of money, which in the case of India meant
that rural society had to bear the brunt. He re-
minded his readers that “a few fertile provinces
are drained of their wealth, that an expensive
war beyond the frontier may be prosecuted.”67
Writing in 1857, another charged that “the debt
already incurred by the Company was solely oc-
casioned by territorial aggrandizement, and it
is impossible that the cost of a gigantic war in
India can be borne by the Indian revenue of the
East India Company.”68
For such critics, India had to be liberated
from the fi scal-military grip of the East India
Company; capital had to be encouraged and
British entrepreneurs invited into India. Writ-
ing in 1840, R. D. Mangles claimed that “the di-
rect drain of money occasioned by the late war,
and by our present political relations, is an evil
scarcely worth notice, when compared with the
mischief inflicted upon the general wealth and
prosperity of the country, by the unavoidable
concomitant neglect or postponement of the
many important matters requiring legislative
measures or administrative regulation.”69 And
by centralizing the Indian debt on Bengal—
making the other presidencies financially sec-
ondary to Bengal—strategic needs were being
met at the cost of greater flexibility in meeting
local requirements for public works. Further-
more, military spending on supplies had little
trickle-down effect on the Indian economy, for
much of the army’s material needs were met by
British suppliers (and this would remain the
case until well into the twentieth century).
67. John William Kaye, “The War on the Sutlej,” North
British Review 5 (1846): 259.
68. “The East India Company,” Bentley’s Miscellany
42 (1857): 419. The classic midcentury statement re-
mains Richard Cobden, How Wars Are Got Up in India:
The Origin of the Burmese War (London: William and
Frederick G. Cash, 1853).
The British Raj was a garrison state in terms of 257
both its structure and its outlook and as such
blended modern and premodern forms and
practices of rule. Not even celebrated reform-
ers like William Bentinck or Thomas Babington
Macauley could make much headway against
such beliefs, for they too yielded to the strategic
imperative that British India was always under
Douglas M. Peers
Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State
threat, if not from without, then most certainly
from within. This in turn led to a prioritizing of
military needs in financial transactions, which
created an increasingly efficient financial mech-
anism but at the cost of economic development.
Yet war was sufficiently profitable to enough
groups that they continued to cooperate and
in so doing helped to bolster the fiscal military
state. Herein lies what would appear to be a fun-
damental difference between the British and
Ottoman empires. For the Ottomans, war was
less a determinant of state enterprise than it was
for the British. Instead, much of the economic
activity associated with war making remained
in private hands, with troops and their equip-
ment being the property of a very conservative
military caste. Moreover, deficit spending was
rare in the eighteenth century, and the Otto-
man Empire was able to build up a surplus. This
was not the case with the East India Company,
which quickly came to appreciate how deficit
financing could strengthen its rule. From that
limited perspective, military fi scalism in India
was instrumental in helping to forge a modern
state apparatus.
At the same time, however, one must rec-
ognize that military fiscalism as practiced in
India was instrumental in perpetuating what
Bayly has aptly termed “archaic globalization.”70
Military fiscalism in India helped to ossify social
and economic relations and frustrated indige-
nous economic development on several levels.
In a recent article, Ravi Ahuja has shown how
the twin processes of militarization and com-
mercialization in South India enabled the coex-
69. R. D. Mangles, “Present State and Prospects of
British India,” Edinburgh Review 71 (1840): 368.
70. C. A. Bayly, “‘Archaic’ and ‘Modern’ Globalization
in the Eurasian and African Arena, c. 1750–1850,” in
Globalization in World History, ed. A. G. Hopkins (Lon-
don: Pimlico, 2002), 45–72.
258 istence of two incompatible forms of labor mo-
bilization. Commercialization of the economy
spurred on the expansion of the wage-labor
sector, while the increasingly militarized nature
of South Indian society not only drew on but
in some cases also reinvigorated coercive forms
of labor recruitment and discipline.71 Within
e the army itself, one finds a curious coexistence
ra ti v
m pa of the modern and the premodern as Western
Co forms of drill and discipline were superimposed
f
ie so
tu d
on preexisting military customs and traditions,
S
ia , a marriage that was not only convenient but also
As
u th appealing to British officers caught up in the ro-
So he
n dt
aa mance of empire. Ultimately, military fiscalism
ri c
Af st as it emerged in the first century of British rule
Ea
le in India, reflecting as it did the priorities and
M idd
anxieties of the garrison state, was very much
a hybrid formation, not only blending together
European and Indian practices and capital but
also coupling elements of modern state bureau-
cracies with premodern forms of social and po-
litical organization.

71. Ravi Ahuja, “Labour Relations in an Early Colonial

Context: Madras, c. 1750–1800,” Modern Asian Stud-
ies 36 (2002): 793–826.