India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    466/552 page 436
    regarding the future; it has disturbed the finances, and thus has retarded the progress of works essential to the prosperity of the country, and checked improvement in the administration. No Englishman who deserves the name will for a moment doubt our resolution to maintain our Empire, or that we can render India in- vulnerable, but statesmen will do well to remember that nothing can save us, sooner or later, from attack, except the certainty on the part of those who may desire to assail us, that every hostile attempt must end in disastrous failure. The condition among all others obviously essential to our success is one on which I need not dilate : absolute supremacy at sea gave to us our empire, and without it the maintenance of that empire in India or elsewhere will be impossible. Although I can say nothing more on the serious subjects to which I have been referring, some account must be given of the constitution of the army in India. In the earlier times of the East India Company, a military force grew up in each of the three presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. Three distinct armies came into existence, and until not long ago they still remained. The principal extensions of territory having occurred, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the presidency of Bengal, the army of Bengal became the most important of the three; in 1856, the year before the mutinies, it was more numerous than the other two armies together. In that year the British forces in India consisted of 39,000 Europeans and 215,000 Natives, besides several contingents, as they were called, maintained for the protection of Native States, and at their expense. The Native army of Bengal, consisting in 1856 of
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