'Essential to a proper understanding of the war and of our world of today' Michael Morpurgo 1.5 million Indians fought with the British in the First World War - from Flanders to the African bush and the deserts of the Islamic world, they saved the Allies from defeat in 1914 and were vital to global victory in 1918. Using previously unpublished veteran interviews, this is their story, told as never before.

Almost two million volunteers served the Indian army in the Great War, always under British regimental officers, high commanders and staff. 150,000 of them were long-serving pre-war professional soldiers; most of the remainder were wartime recruits, drawn from across South Asia. Half of the Indian soldiers were sent overseas, and those who returned did so with a very different outlook on life - for some it lit the spark for Jihad and for even more it led to a desire for Independence. In most histories of the war, the Tommies, pals and poets have dominated the tales - but what of the war as experienced by their Indian counterparts? George Morton-Jack's remarkable, fresh take on the First World War sets this right, telling the Indian army's story of 1914-18 through the voices of the service's officers and ranks, and of the princes, priests, prostitutes and others who encountered them across the continents. It reveals their journeys to the greatest battlefields mankind had ever seen, their experiences as prisoners of war in Germany, Romania and elsewhere, and their missions as secret agents that took them down rivers, across deserts and through mountain ranges from Transylvania to Afghanistan and beyond. The Indian Army at War is a fascinating, necessary book that illuminates a central part of the Great War that has too often been overlooked.

This is the first cultural and literary history of India and the First World War, with archival research from Europe and South Asia.

Drawing on untapped new sources, the first global history of the Indian Expeditionary Forces in World War I While their story is almost always overlooked, the 1.5 million Indian soldiers who served the British Empire in World War I played a crucial role in the eventual Allied victory. Despite their sacrifices, Indian troops received mixed reactions from their allies and their enemies alike-some were treated as liberating heroes, some as mercenaries and conquerors themselves, and all as racial inferiors and a threat to white supremacy. Yet even as they fought as imperial troops under the British flag, their broadened horizons fired in them new hopes of racial equality and freedom on the path to Indian independence. Drawing on freshly uncovered interviews with members of the Indian Army in Iraq and elsewhere, historian George Morton-Jack paints a deeply human story of courage, colonization, and racism, and finally gives these men their rightful place in history.

Barkawi re-imagines the study of war with imperial and multinational armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War.

Third place in the 2022 SAHR Templer Best First Book Prize More than one million Indian soldiers were deployed during World War I, serving in the Indian Army as part of Britain's imperial war effort. These men fought in France and Belgium, Egypt and East Africa, and Gallipoli, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. In Indian Soldiers in World War I Andrew T. Jarboe follows these Indian soldiers--or sepoys--across the battlefields, examining the contested representations British and Indian audiences drew from the soldiers' wartime experiences and the impacts these representations had on the British Empire's racial politics. Presenting overlooked or forgotten connections, Jarboe argues that Indian soldiers' presence on battlefields across three continents contributed decisively to the British Empire's final victory in the war. While the war and Indian soldiers' involvement led to a hardening of the British Empire's prewar racist ideologies and governing policies, the battlefield contributions of Indian soldiers fueled Indian national aspirations and calls for racial equality. When Indian soldiers participated in the brutal suppression of anti-government demonstrations in India at war's end, they set the stage for the eventual end of British rule in South Asia.

"First published in Great Britain in 2015 as The Raj at War by The Bodley Head"--Title page verso.