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This, or especially, the first half, feels like a dissertation paper on the origins of the Indian Mutiny. It is full of close arguing, and written out facts, figures, and references on the subject. Some of this feels repetitious, not only in itself, but in reference to the introduction, which has an extensive description of the recent historiography of the subject, describing the various positions taken and when.

It is so closely argued, that it can be hard to discern just what David’s position on it all is.

While the introduction and the first half can by dizzying enough to make out the point, it is stated enough to get a grasp, and the second half is much smoother while he demonstrates his conclusions with an account of the opening stages of the Mutiny.

The main position he does have is that “professional” concerns dominated all the others in causing the mutiny. Not religion, or caste, but more prosaic problems such as the fact that the cost of living had about doubled in India over the previous half-century, but military pay had stayed flat. In fact, it had recently gone down a bit, as some forms of supplemental pay had been cut as there were no more parts of India proper to pacify.

David also shows how problems of discipline were endemic to the British forces there. Officers generally had punishments of men taken out of their hands, and the far away courts were likely to nullify most complaints on appeal. Most British officers did not see maintaining their units as their primary duty, and were off elsewhere, socializing, and never fostering any respect with their men. It is the picture of a dysfunctional organization, and he points out repeated warnings from various parties about all this, but reform never comes.

He also characterizes the overall goals in a mercenary light. Mutinying units generally stayed together, and he supposes that this is a reflection of the class’ historical occupation as soldiers, and looking for a better paymaster to graft themselves onto.

I have deep suspicions about this conclusion. His account shows there was some form of coordinated plot with various people in some contact with each other trying to coordinate the timing of what became a large mutiny. He also points towards some of the leaders (or their direct descendants) recently disenfranchised by the British, were more than just who the mutinying leaders attached themselves to. Instead, the initial seeds came from their courts, and this was overall a political move to kick the British out of India by using the dissatisfaction brewing in the units managed by the East India Company to suborn the entire structure, and use it themselves. The entire cartridge controversy falls on top of this already-existing plot, and immediately seized on to rile up the rank-and-file into actual mutiny.

Overall, it’s a disappointing book, but one with a lot of good information. As he gives all the background figures, you get never organized enough discussions of previous mutinies in India. While they are used for some compare and contrast, you don’t get a sense of what any of the events were like. The description of the actual Mutiny is also combined with a lot of motion of various units prepared to revolt, but various factors, including random chance, keep it from getting out of hand until August at Rajput.

I read the Endeavour Press Kindle edition, and it has the same problems as their version of Saul David’s The Homicidal Earl. The problems are not as pronounced here, but certainly OCR conversion problems exist. The biggest one is that N.I. (Native Infantry) is variously rendered N.I., N.1., and occasionally N.J. Instead of words breaking where they were probably hyphenated in the original, they are joined together when they should be hyphenated (‘fortyfive’). But the overall incidence is lower, but there’s one place where the text breaks up into odd characters for half a word. Like with the previous book, I don’t know if the later Sharpe Books edition is improved, or exactly the same.