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(TNSbook) -- The College of Wooster issued the following news:
Christina Welsch, associate professor of history and South Asian studies at The College of Wooster, is the author of a book that flips India's traditional historical narrative about colonial India, shifting focus from the northeast to south India where the importance of the armies and soldiers to the understanding of India's social and political history becomes clear.
The Company's Sword: The East India Company and the Politics of Militarism, 1644-1858, was published in August 2022 by Cambridge University Press. The book, which extends Welsch's dissertation research, is a belated answer to a student's question during a spring 2017 British Empire class she taught her first year at Wooster. During the class, she explained that until 1857 the British territory in India was controlled by the British East India Company, not by the British crown. The company had its own private army separate from the British army, and the majority of the soldiers were Indian soldiers, called sepoys.
"A student asked me, 'Why did the East India Company army survive when other private armies in the British Empire had disappeared before then, and why did it fall apart after 1857?'...