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PETER STANLEY, White Mutiny: British Military Culture in India, 1825-1875. London: Hurst, 1998, pp xiv + 314, maps, illustrations, ISBN 1-85065-330-5, L20.00 h/b.
In seeking to demonstrate `the close relationship between ... military and ... social history', Peter Stanley argues that the two (or more) 'nations' of mid-Victorian Britain were also reflected in the social divisions within the British military establishment in India-in particular between the regiments of the Queen on the one hand, and those raised by the East India Company itself (the `Company's Europeans') on the other.
Stanley is particularly good on the subtle social distinctions within the body of British officers in India. The officers of Her Majesty's regiments were drawn mainly from the landed gentry, and they tended to look down on the more middle-class officers of the Company's Europeans, often disparaging the latter as 'Cockneys'. It is certainly true that many officers of the Company's European regiments suffered from `influential poverty' -`the conjunction of genteel pretension and economic privation' (p 29)-and went to India primarily to secure their financial future (which was one reason why they were so keen to find lucrative extra-regimental appointments once they were out there)....