1st Edition

Indian Soldiers in the First World War Re-visiting a Global Conflict

Edited By Ashutosh Kumar, Claude Markovits Copyright 2021
240 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

240 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

240 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

This book explores the lives and social histories of Indians soldiers who fought in the First World War. It focuses on their motivations, experiences, and lives after returning from service in Europe, Mesopotamia, East Africa, and Palestine, to present a more complete picture of Indian participation in the war. The book looks at the Indian support to the war for political concessions from the... Read more

List of Figures. List of contributors. 1. Introduction 2. Turbans in the Trenches: Indian Sepoys and Sowars on the Western Front during the Great War 3. Combat Motivation of the Sepoys and Sowars during the First World War 4. The Maharajas’ Contribution to the First World War: An Overview 5. Indian Soldiers' Experience in France: Perceptions and Outcomes 6. From Victory to Defeat: The Indian Army in Mesopotamia, 1914-1916 7. The Indian Army in the East African Campaign, 1914-1918 8. Modernization, Social Change and Indian Soldiers: A Case Study of Haryana 9. Response of Northeast India to the First World War. Index.

Biography

Ashutosh Kumar is a historian of ‘Global South’ and Director of Centre for Alternative Studies in Social Sciences (CASSS), New Delhi. He has been a fellow at various prestigious institutions of the world including Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, the Centre for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University and Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. He has published many books, and articles in international peer reviewed journals including, Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies, 1830-1920’, 2017.

Claude Markovits is Senior Research Fellow Emeritus at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. A historian of modern India, with a particular interest in the economic and social history of the colonial era, he authored many books and articles in English and in French. Amongst his English publications are Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931-39: the indigenous capitalist class and the rise of the Congress Party (1985), The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (2000) , The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma (2003), Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs : Indian Business in the Colonial Era (2008) and India and the World : A History of Connections c. 1750-c. 2000 (forthcoming). His French publications include a history of the Indian Expeditionary Force in France during World War I entitled De l’Indus à la Somme: les Indiens en France pendant la Grande Guerre (2018).