Burmese volunteers Burmese War. A short and swift campaign in November The Third ensured the surrender of King Thebaw, the occupation War. of his capital, Mandalay, and the subsequent annexation of Upper Burma; though three years and more of dacoity and jungle warfare followed, before the country was pacified and civil administration supported by a strong specially raised body of military police. The incorporation of Upper Burma was a long step forward towards finality in the frontiers of the Indian Empire. Among the troops which served in the Burmese fighting White was an auxiliary corps of mounted men. In the early in India. days of the East India Company there were, and must necessarily have been, potential soldiers at the Company's factories, in the European employees of the Company, ready to serve in time of need. As the Company grew out of the factory stage and developed regular armed forces, both white and coloured, the need for such auxiliaries died away. The Indian Mutiny called them into life again, and about 1860 came a new stimulus from the volunteer movement in England. Some further encouragement was given to the Volunteers in India in this year 1885; at the opening of the present century they numbered throughout India some thirty thousand men, Europeans and Eurasians, and the numbers have since been more than maintained. Before the War they formed a valuable supplement to the regular armies, including companies for port defence, Garrison Artillery, Light Horse, Mounted Rifles, and Infantry Rifle Corps, railway employees contributing a volunteer defence force for the security of the lines.1 1 For the Volunteers in India see The Indian Army, a Sketch of its History and Organization, reprinted from the third edition of the Imperial Gazetteer, 1907, pp. 53-4. The volunteers 'existed in the early days of the British occupation as Militia at the Chief Settlements'. See also the Annual Parliamentary Papers on The Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India. On April 1, 1900, the enrolled strength of the Volunteers was 31,036, of whom 29,994 were efficient. In 1907 they were about 34,000, with 32,000 efficient, 61 corps in all. See the account given below, pp. 264–5, of the beginning of the volunteer movement at Singapore, from which it appears that the Singapore Volunteers were the first modern Volunteer Corps in India. The Earlier in the year than the Burmese War there occurred what was known as the Panjdeh incident, armed encroachment by the Russians upon the Northern border of Afghanistan, where a Boundary Commission was at work. It was by far the most serious and threatening feature of the year in India. As in 1878, so in 1885, war between Great Britain and Russia was imminent; but happily in either case the difficulties were adjusted; and in course of years a clear understanding was established with the Russian Government, the respective spheres of influence being definitively demarcated. The crisis, however, had, directly or indirectly, in various ways, far-reaching effects. Not only did it call attention anew to the numbers and organization of the regular armed forces of India, and to the condition of the land frontiers of India from the point of view of possible invasion, but it led to a gradual change of the whole outlook, military and political alike, to a wider conception of India as a whole, to a broader basis of policy. The eyes of India, or of those responsible for India, were now turned outwards more than before; the arms of India were sharpened for the protection of India from alien enemies rather than for the preservation of internal security feudatory chieftains of India, who in the days of the Mutiny had stood as loyal friends in their own immediate surroundings of a hard-pressed and beleaguered British garrison in India, now came forward rather as partners in a plan which should concern India as a single entity, as an Imperial factor for defence and offence, not a land to be held down and kept passive, but a land and a people or group of peoples to be active in assisting and establishing the strength of India, and through India the strength of the Empire, of which India was now an integral part rather than a subject dependency. The immediate outcome of the crisis was a substantial increase in the numbers both of the British and of the native troops in India. There followed improvements in the organization of the Indian Army, the introduction of Frontier. the linked battalion system,1 of regimental centres, the formation of a reserve of Indian soldiers, to be kept in training and called up in case of emergency-all changes tending to assimilate the Indian to the British Army. The trouble had arisen on the North-West Frontier: The NorthWest while it was acute and troops were being mobilized, the future Lord Roberts, then Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army, had been designated to command an army corps, and the North-West Frontier had been his special study and the scene of his campaigns. When therefore, in a few months' time, he succeeded Sir Donald Stewart as Commander-in-Chief in India, the defence of the NorthWest Frontier became his peculiar charge and received unremitting attention. It was not only a question of works and defences, of improving communications, of forts, of roads, of railways: it was a matter of concentrating large forces within striking distance of the danger points, as well as of dominating the frontier tribes and, as far as possible, enlisting them in the service of India. Thus the North-West Frontier of India, the part of India where India's foreign relations are most in evidence, came to be the principal seat of military strength in India; and, as its military importance was more and more emphasized, so its political status was more and more enhanced. In the days when the three Presidencies had separate armies, the whole of the North of India was the province of the Bengal Army. When, in April 1895, the separate Presidency Armies were abolished, India was divided into four territorial commands, one of them being the Punjab command, in which was included the NorthWest Frontier. In 1899-1900 the control of the all-important Khyber Pass was transferred from the Government 1 The linked battalion system was a leading feature of the Cardwell reforms of 1871, whereby each Line regiment had always one battalion at home and one serving overseas. In 1885 'it was found that measures were necessary, which would allow of the concentration of a considerably larger and stronger force in the North West of India without denuding the rest of the country of military protection'. Statement exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India during the year 1891-2 and the nine preceding years, March 1894 43, p. 175. |