Soldier Sahibs: The Daring Adventures Who Tamed India's Northwest Frontier

The author was born in Indian where six generations of his family served under the British Raj. His father was a political officer in the North-West Frontier. He must have brought him to the idea of dealing with the affairs of the Raj which was in that area always also and most prominently a military issue. He himself returned after the usual education in England to the Indian Subcontinent in 1966 to work with the Voluntary Service Overseas in Nepal. He made a name as a historian who specialized in British colonial and military subjects. And a specialist he is in deed. This book is about the British Raj in northern India and the Himalayas. For anybody who has no knowledge at all in this field, it must be difficult in parts to read, if not out of date. Here my warning: this is not only a book about soldiery! For the author the "Soldier Sahibs" stand for something on a larger scale. They are to blame for making the famous North-West Frontier. So, this book is about that border-line and its adjacent land which is now Pakistan and Afghanistan foremost. The book is mainly about events in north-west British India (which included Pakistan) between 1839 and 1857, spanning the advent and mortal departure of a certain cadet, whose proceedings in that exotic, demanding surrounding is also described, and this very broad and detailed. An attempt to bring to life what seems to be so far away! Meanwhile the British East India Company extended its conquests to the very edge of the mountain barriers which define the northern boundaries of the Indian sub-continent, a land that has always seen wars and revolt and still has, long since the influence of the British faded away. I read this book because I visited these areas and I tried to get a better idea of what made the area to what it is now. It is still all about power, economical advantage on one side and the self-establishment and self-determination, self-rule and other "selfes" cause the people who live there are concerned about their "selfes" and nothing else, a lesson still to be learned by the western allies, it seems. We hear here a lot about army organization which is not so interesting today, although it helps to understand the procedures then, when we know that there were regular and irregular troops of the Company; that the Native infantry was largely made up of recruits from certain regions, more or less difficult to handle, and nearly all high-born Hindus from the Brahmin and Rajput upper castes, with the result that the men in these corps put caste and religious loyalty first. An infantry regiment raised in Punjab might have had two companies of Punjab Muslims, one of Sikhs and one of Hindu Dogras. That asked for trouble. Sometimes I had a tinge of suspicion that the author tends to hail the transporters of his stories, as far as the British are concerned, that special breed of British heroes: "Saints militant fired with Christian grace; beaux sabreurs, sans peur et sans reproche" who were "mostl

This book is a good description of Indian history from about 1830 to 1857 culminating in the Indian Mutiny. It is about the men who commanded the NW Indian territories on behalf of the East India Company and principally about one hero called John Nicholson. Despite the subtitle, this book is a great deal more than short biographic narratives about the men. It is the seam of their environment that provides half the interest consisting of geographical descriptions, the attitudes of Indians and how the British and "Indians" conducted their business. There are some gripping accounts of bloody battles on horseback, with bits being chopped off and we can see that films like Gladiator are the tip of the iceberg when it came to hand to hand horseback combat before the 20th century. The men and horses were brave and some of them knew what they wanted and how to get it. This is particularly true in how the violent Pakhtun tribes in Pakistan were bought to heel. As aliens, the British succeeded in creating order (as they were neutral) between parties like Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus who could easily foment religious rivalry between themselves. The British had an art to how they brought about law and order and we can see it was no small accomplishment. There is a certain amount of bigotry and imperialism in operation which is quite clear, but these were the days before the British became complacent and divorced themselves from Indian culture at the beginnings of the 20th century, which eventually created the independence movement that lead to partition. Sikhs today feel left out of a homeland that was owed to them by the British. This is a book that shows how loyal Sikhs were to the British and the background to their territorial claims. Charles Allen is a fine author and this book deserves praise. The war in it and many quotations make the book quite gripping and one hopes some people today are made of the same stuff as certain aspects of the men described - though not all of those aspects.

In his prologue, Charles Allen lays out the approach he will take Soldier Sahibs. This is not to be read so much as a comprehensive history examining the social issues or complexities of the expansion of British rule out of India and into the North-West Frontier (now partially in Afghanistan and partially in Pakistan), but as a true-to-life "boy's adventure" story. The tale is of John Nicholson (one of Allen's forbearers) and the other Young Men who, under the guidance of Henry Lawrence, help spread the reach of the East India Company.And what a tale it is: culture clashes, petty bureaucrats, noble savages. Allen draws heavily upon the letters, diaries and reports of the principle heroes of the tale, leading to a history that is drenched in Victorian stereotypes and ideals. With this caveat in mind, however, Allen does a great job of bringing the modern reader into the world walked by Nicholson and his compatriots. The writing draws in the reader with fantastic tale after fantastic tale, starting with a brief biography of Nicholson and of the East India Company and ending with the lifting of the siege of Delhi during the Sepoy Rebellion. There are lots of vignettes highlighting life in the service of "John Company" and the British Empire and the inevitable culture clashes that occurred across the subcontinent.Oh, and for those keeping track at home, the subtitle "The Daring Adventurers Who Tamed India's Northwest Frontier" appears to be the work of a copywriter at the U.S. publisher, Carroll & Graf. The original U.K. subtitle is "The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier," which doesn't have as much flash, but doesn't seem as harsh as "tamed."(Reviewed copy was the 2001 paperback version, printed in the U.K. by Abacus.)