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The prevalence of sepoys in the East India Company's armed forces made them the most significant military contributors to the expansion of company authority through the Indian Subcontinent. ![]() By 1782 to 1783 the ratio was four to one. From this point forward there existed a profound disparity between the number of sepoys and the number of Europeans in the company's armies. His expansion and reorganization of the sepoys paid considerable dividends at Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764), where sepoy-dominated forces won the victories that made the East India Company a territorial power in Bengal. Clive also took the innovative step of introducing three European officers to train and command each sepoy battalion. It was he who raised the first battalion of sepoys, known as the "Lal Paltan" (red coats). The British military leader and colonial administrator Robert Clive (1725–1774) was quick to appreciate their value: sepoys comprised two-thirds of the troops at his command during the heroic defense of Arcot (1751). These factors, combined with perceived threats from European rivals and local potentates, ensured that company armies became increasingly reliant on sepoys from the 1750s. ![]() From their perspective, service in the East India Company's armies was attractive because it provided relatively high and regular income, as well as certain legal and social privileges. ![]() Thanks to the extensive military manpower market that existed in India, especially in the north, potential sepoys were also easy to find. Sepoys proved to be cheaper than European recruits, as well as morally and physically superior. He simply emulated the French, who had shown the potential of Indian troops that were trained and equipped to European standards in the Anglo-French struggle over the Carnatic (1744–1748), a region in southeast India. The East India Company's first sepoy units were raised in 1748 by Major "Stringer" Lawrence (1697–1775). However, these troops should not be confused with sepoys, since they were neither trained nor equipped in European fashion. Though the proportion of sepoys to European troops was reduced thereafter, they remained majority participants in every campaign undertaken by the Indian Army through 1947.įrom the early seventeenth century, the East India Company employed modest numbers of Indians as an economical solution to the need for guards and escorts, particularly in troubled times. The sepoy was the foundation of this military power, and the mutiny that sparked the great Revolt of 1857 did not alter this reality. ![]() As the British diplomat, soldier, and historian John Malcolm (1769–1833) wrote in 1826, "Our government of India is essentially military and our means of preserving and improving our possessions through the operation of our civil institutions depends on our wise and politic exercise of that military power upon which the whole fabric rests." A significant majority of the East India Company's armed forces from the middle decades of the eighteenth century, sepoys were absolutely crucial to the expansion, consolidation, and maintenance of the company's interests in India and Asia. Derived from the Persian word sipahi, meaning "regular soldier," the term sepoy designates Indian infantrymen trained and equipped to European standards and employed in the armies of the East India Company and later the British Crown.
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