Dr Adam Prime on the Indian Army and the First World War
Thursday 21st March 2024
Dr Adam Prime gave a talk to the Society entitled 'The Indian Army, The First World War, and the Question of Manpower' on Thursday, 27 March 2024 at 7:00PM GMT.
A recording of the event is now available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/CgPyTAoiToE
Synopsis
When war was declared, the Indian Army numbered 240,000 men and 2,300 officers, supplemented by a British Army garrison on the subcontinent of 75,000. Within less than two months of Britian’s entry to the Great War, an Indian contingent arrived in Marseilles, and Lord Kitchener wanted more. By the end of 1914, Indian troops would find themselves not only in Europe, but also Aden, China, East Africa, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
This, however, was not preordained. Right up until the commencement of hostilities with Germany, the Indian government had viewed the Indian Army’s main responsibility as ‘maintaining internal security and tranquillity’, to achieve this its annual intake of private soldiers was 15,000. Yet, from this standing start, 1.3 million Indians served as combatants or labourers during the conflict. In 1918 the Indian Army numbered 548,000, and its annual intake stood at 200,000.
This talk will highlight how this remarkable transformation was achieved. It will demonstrate how recruitment and training patterns were adapted to incorporate not only a larger number of recruits but also peoples not traditionally recruited into the military. And how the recruitment of officers was a particular challenge, as new officer cadets needed not only the military training but also the linguistic skills to command Indian soldiers. The talk will flesh out these difficulties and how they were overcome by accessing several pools of potential officers.
Ultimately, this talk will show how the Indian Army overcame a series of manpower problems to put a significantly enlarged army into all of the major theatres of the Great War.
Speaker biography
Dr Adam Prime is an independent historian and gained a PhD from the University of Leicester in 2018, his thesis being a study of the Indian Army officer corps between 1861 and 1921. Adam taught at Leicester whilst studying for his PhD and then went on to lecture in military and international history at the University of Salford. He currently sits on the Western Front Association's National Executive Committee and acts as University Trustee, administering the Masters and PhD research grants.