EBOOK
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From celebrated military historian Richard Holmes, author of 'Tommy' and 'Redcoat', the rich history of the British soldier in India from Clive to the end of empire.
'Sahib' is a broad and sweeping military history of the British soldier in India, but its focus, like that of Tommy and Redcoat before it, will be on the men who served in India and the women who followed them across that vast and dusty continent, bore their children, and, all too often, mopped their brows as they died.
The book begins with the remarkable story of India's rise from commercial enclave to great Empire, from Clive's victory of Plassey, through the imperial wars of the 18th-century and the Afghan and Sikh Wars of the 1840s, through the bloody turmoil of the Mutiny, and the frontier campaigns at the century's end. With its focus on the experience of ordinary soldiers, 'Sahib' explains to us why soldiers of the Raj had joined the army, how they got to India and what they made of it when they arrived. The book examines Indian soldiering in peace and war, from Kipling's 'snoring barrack room' to storming parties assaulting mighty fortresses, cavalry swirling across open plains, and khaki columns inching their way between luring hills. Making full use of extensive and often neglected archive material in the India Office Library and National Army Museum, 'Sahib' will do for the British soldier in India - whether serving a local ruler, forming part of the Indian army, or soldiering with a British regiment - what 'Tommy' has done for the ordinary soldier in World War I.
• Following on from Redcoat and Tommy, this is the next big history from Richard Holmes
• Sahib makes full use of personal accounts of soldiers who served in the vast and varied nation
• Tommy has sold over 70,000 copies to date
• Richard Holmes is our most celebrated military historian writing today
• There is an enormous market for books about India
Competition: White Mughals, Antony Beevor, John Keegan, Hew Strachan
'Sahib' is a broad and sweeping military history of the British soldier in India, but its focus, like that of Tommy and Redcoat before it, will be on the men who served in India and the women who followed them across that vast and dusty continent, bore their children, and, all too often, mopped their brows as they died.
The book begins with the remarkable story of India's rise from commercial enclave to great Empire, from Clive's victory of Plassey, through the imperial wars of the 18th-century and the Afghan and Sikh Wars of the 1840s, through the bloody turmoil of the Mutiny, and the frontier campaigns at the century's end. With its focus on the experience of ordinary soldiers, 'Sahib' explains to us why soldiers of the Raj had joined the army, how they got to India and what they made of it when they arrived. The book examines Indian soldiering in peace and war, from Kipling's 'snoring barrack room' to storming parties assaulting mighty fortresses, cavalry swirling across open plains, and khaki columns inching their way between luring hills. Making full use of extensive and often neglected archive material in the India Office Library and National Army Museum, 'Sahib' will do for the British soldier in India - whether serving a local ruler, forming part of the Indian army, or soldiering with a British regiment - what 'Tommy' has done for the ordinary soldier in World War I.
• Following on from Redcoat and Tommy, this is the next big history from Richard Holmes
• Sahib makes full use of personal accounts of soldiers who served in the vast and varied nation
• Tommy has sold over 70,000 copies to date
• Richard Holmes is our most celebrated military historian writing today
• There is an enormous market for books about India
Competition: White Mughals, Antony Beevor, John Keegan, Hew Strachan