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, even when it was clear to them that few of their commanders were looking out for their best interests. Andrew T. Jarboe follows the stories of these soldiers— or sepoys—‘from remote rural villages in the Punjab…to the trenches of Belgium and France, to the beaches at Gallipoli, and to the walls of Baghdad and Jerusalem’.

Drawing on contemporary reports, Parliamentary debates, archival sources— British as well as German—and, most importantly, soldier letters, Jarboe examines how British and Indian audiences interpreted soldiers’ wartime experiences differently and how these interpretations affected the British Empire’s racial politics. Presenting overlooked or forgotten connections, he 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 Empire’s prewar racist ideologies and governing policies, the battlefield contributions of Indian soldiers fueled Indian national aspirations and calls for racial equality. These, he shows, were replaced by calls for Swaraj when Indian soldiers were used to brutally suppress anti-government demonstrations in India at war’s end, setting the stage for the eventual end of British rule in South Asia.

Engagingly written, Indian Soldiers in World War I is a compelling account of the imperial nature of the war and its impact on anti-colonial resistance in early twentieth-century India.