Imperial soldiering: Enlistment, recruitment, and the human dimension of the lives of British Other Ranks in Colonial India, 1844 – 1943

Moore, Timothy 2023. Imperial soldiering: Enlistment, recruitment, and the human dimension of the lives of British Other Ranks in Colonial India, 1844 – 1943. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

My thesis explores the lives of British Other Ranks (henceforth BORs) stationed in India from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Military and imperial historians have analysed the social structures that conditioned the lives of troops in the political context of war cultures, yet they do not consider the soldier’s response to the structures that regulated their lives. This thesis researches the agency BORs exercised while they conducted their duties in India, especially the role of soldiers in the Welsh Regiment, Somerset Light Infantry and the Connaught Rangers. The study analyses the distinct regional factors that necessitated the recruit’s enlistment into the military, and the reasons that persuaded recruits to serve in a specific regiment. Chapter three assess why prospective recruits wanted to join the British Army, to indicate Wales’s role in the history of imperialism. To explain why troops chose to serve in a specific regiment, chapter four evaluates the emotional, economic, familial and social barriers that blockaded the prospective recruit’s admittance into the Army. Chapter three considers why prospective recruits enlisted, and chapter four contemplates the agency that recruits exercised when they enrolled as soldiers. Existing studies about imperialism have demonised the character of non-elite troops. Instead, by examining the extra-curricular activities of BORs the thesis explores and imbues them with humane qualities of compassion and care unlike the dominant representation of ‘the scum of the earth’ (Wellington). Chapter five evaluates the carvings that soldiers inscribed onto the rockfaces at Cherat and Murree hill stations, to explain how troops used carvings to continue to serve while wounded or convalescing. This thesis disputes and changes the representation of BORs in the history of the British Empire. My study acknowledges how soldiers expressed their regional identities in the imperial environment. To indicate how troops empathised and sought to alleviate the difficulties of their home communities, chapter six studies the charity fundraising activities of soldiers in Welsh regiments. The commitment soldiers showed to their hometowns in Wales changes the image of troops stationed in India, restores the ordinary soldier back to military history and it broadens the study of imperialism. My thesis also examines the disorderly as well as the orderly conduct of troops. To indicate how soldiers asserted themselves in the British Empire to address their grievances, chapter seven considers the Mutiny of the Connaught Rangers at Jalandhar and Solon (today Solan) in 1920. This study represents troops as autonomous agents in the history of imperialism and in military studies. This thesis incorporates the soldier’s agency and their experiences of imperialism into the history of the Raj.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Acceptance
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain D History General and Old World > DS Asia U Military Science > U Military Science (General)
Funders:	SHARE Postgraduate Scholarship
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	25 October 2023
Date of Acceptance:	16 January 2023
Last Modified:	25 Oct 2023 15:43
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/163498

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