The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India

ISBN-13: 9780521824446 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 456 str.

Randolf G. S. Cooper

Opis

The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns of 1803 represented the last serious indigenous obstacle to the formation of the British Raj. This study examines Maratha military culture through a battle-by-battle analysis of the campaigns. Randolf Cooper challenges the ethnocentric assumptions that associate Western political ascendancy with "The Military Revolution" and argues that the real contest for India was the struggle to control the South Asian military economy, rather than a single decisive military battle. Victory depended more on economics and intelligence than on superiority in discipline, drill and technology.

Recenzje

'The book constructs a useful model of the political economy of the Maratha wars to question the ethnocentric assumptions of British military superiority as well as the nationalistic explanations of the Maratha effect … He matches the rich details for almost every important battle in the period by an equally rigourous attempt to engage with the mooted issues of the transition to colonialism … In other words, whereas the book brings out the complexity of the Maratha military culture with remarkable insight, it essentialises and simplifies that of the British … The dexterous handling of the military archives that has enriched our understanding of the Maratha political culture.' Journal of Modern Asian Studies

Spis treści

List of maps; Acknowledgements; A note on transliteration and references; List of abbreviations used in the references; Introduction; 1. Maratha military culture; 2. British perceptions and the road to war in 1803; 3. The Deccan campaign of 1803; 4. The Hindustan campaign of 1803; 5. 'Coming in'; 6. The anatomy of victory; Appendix I: chronology of Anglo-South Asian wars; Appendix II: British troop strengths and casualties for the Hindustan and Deccan campaigns 1803; Appendix III: Governor-General Wellesley's 'Maratha' proclamation of 1803; Appendix IV: mercenary pension records; Appendix V: the Marathas' employment of mercenaries in historic perspective; Glossary; Notes; Bibliography; Index.