Towns for the War. The Cantonment System in British India and its Impact on the Raj’s Domestic and External Security

The “Great Mutiny” (more appropriately, the Indian Rebellion of 1857) affected the development of British India’s military establishment in several ways. Within this process, the establishment of military cantonments played a key role. Cantonments were not new, being first established in the mid-18th century. In the early stages of the Mutiny, their large concentration of troops made them one cornerstone of the rebellion. However, in the post-Mutiny, their function evolved. Separating native troops from the civilian population emerged as their primary domestic function, also promoted by new recruitment strategies and units’ ethnic composition. On the external side, cantonments became pillars of the new defensive network commanding the country’s turbulent north-western frontier and the springboard to project the Raj’s military potential towards Afghanistan and the other transborder ramparts. The system performed well in the test of the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919) and survived almost unscathed to the end of British rule, leaving a long-lasting imprint, especially on the distribution of today’s Indian and Pakistani military structures. However, although the cantonments’ physical distribution highlighted a robust external orientation, the domestic dimension remains, somehow confirming the role that public order functions had among the tasks of the British Indian military establishment.