About This Book

An Important Study of the Wars that Gave Great Britain Control of the Indian Subcontinent with a New Critical Introduction by Jon Coulston

The First and Second Sikh Wars of the 1840s were the final battles that secured British domination of the Indian subcontinent for the next century. Noted for both their brutality and sophistication in tactics—with large-scale cavalry clashes, sieges, and artillery and infantry engagements—the wars against the Sikh principalities not only handed control of India to Great Britain, but the defeated Sikh armies ended up becoming some of the most loyal and ablest soldiers of the British Empire. The lessons from these wars also influenced changes in British military policy and strategies, particularly against indigenous peoples.

In 1911, the British Army command asked its historical branch in India to prepare a military history of the Sikh Wars. The result, The First and Second Sikh Wars, is a publication rich in detail and analysis and a treasure trove of background information about the British Army in India, Sikh culture at the time, and the battles of Ferozeshah, Aliwal, Chillianwala, and Gujrat. Despite the importance of these wars in the history of both the nineteenth century and the modern era, there are no similar complete narrative accounts of these conflicts available that rely on official records of the period. This edition is enhanced by historian Jon Coulston’s new introduction and suggestions for further reading.

Reginald George Burton (1864–1951) was a military historian and author of From Boulogne to Austerlitz: Napoleon’s Campaign of 1805 and Wellington’s Campaigns in India, among other works.

Jon Coulston is a historian at St Andrews University, Scotland. He also reintroduced Westholme’s edition of The Life of Belisarius.

Praise for The First and Second Sikh Wars:

“The First and Second Sikh Wars, first published in 1911 but reprinted here with an introduction by Jon Coulston, belongs to an interesting series of what might best be termed retrospective demi-official histories of British campaigns in India. They are retrospective in the sense that many of the wars covered in these histories took place fifty or more years before publication in 1911, and demi-official in that not only did the authors have access to official dispatches, memoranda and other documents, but publication of their histories was sponsored and subsidized by the Government of India. As such, they provide a wealth of detail on campaigns otherwise inaccessible to many readers. Just as importantly they help illuminate how the inner circles of the British Raj chose to write this history. The Sikh Wars are of particular interest in that these were not only amongst the most hard fought campaigns experienced by the British in India, but as a result of these wars the Punjab and its peoples came to occupy a pre-eminent place in the policies and imaginations of British India.”—Journal of Military History