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On the 1st of November 1803 an East India Company (E.I.C.) army under General Gerard Lake met the Fourth Brigade of Sindhia's Army of Hindustan at Laswari in Northern India. By evening the Fourth Brigade, the last surviving unit of Sindhia's army, had ceased to exist; seven thousand Maratha dead and wounded littered the battlefield. British casualties that day numbered 838 killed and wounded. Commenting on the blood battle, General Lake, who had fought at Lincelles in France in 1793, said "I never was in so severe a business in my life or anything like it, and pray to God, I never may be in such a situation again."(1)
Laswari was not the only occasion when the British confronted European-style Indian armies. Assaye had preceded Laswari, and the Anglo-Sikh wars would follow a half-century later. In fact, the period between 1760 and 1850 was marked by incessant conflict between the E.I.C. and the Indian powers, a direct consequence of the former's struggle for mastery of the Indian subcontinent. The military historiography of these conflicts has argued that although the Indians put up
good fight they were no match for the British. More recent historiography, however, is beginning to uncover the fact that the Indian powers had progressed much further down the road to military equality with the West than previously believed. Scholars have proposed different explanations for the British colonial conquest of India, while at the same time acknowledging the remarkable strides made by Indian powers in catching up militarily with the West. According to Geoffrey Parker, the Indian move to adopt Western military tactics and weaponry was a case of too little too late.(2) Bruce Lenman argues that "the real key to the subsequent military success of the East India Company...was the sheer size of the sepoy infantry force it raised."(3) R. G. S. Cooper is of the opinion that the Indian failure lay in their faulty command structure and the lack of an institutionalized officer corps.(4)
All of the above viewpoints contribute to an understanding of the causes or the collapse of the Indian powers. However, they fail to present a comprehensive picture of the true nature of the colonial conflict in India. The problem lies in their approach; they study the issue...