Resumen de The Construction of Regiments in the Indian Army: 1859-1913
Indian soldiers fought for the British not because the Indian army was integrated with colonial society, and not because of superior British military expertise, but because of British managerial skill. Particularly after 1857, the British succeeded in incorporating sepoys into a professionalized combat organization by constructing ethnic and military identities for groups that were deemed `martial races', and then amalgamating these constructed groups into a regimental system that reinforced pride of race while providing an institutional identity - Edmund Burke's `little platoons' - for the soldiers. Details of uniform differentiated among regiments and introduced distinctions among communities. Different titles and different badges, different ways of winding pugris, or the fact that Gurkha regiments wore caps and hats instead, served to make the Indian army a network of self-referencing organizations that could neither combine for purposes of mutiny nor submerge themselves in a wider whole. That army nevertheless performed effectively in battle until the mass casualties of the First World War destroyed the intricate clan and family networks that had grown within the regiments.
