The Foreign Conscripts in Tippoo’s Armies

Book descriptionIn the late eighteenth century, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan fought the East India Company with an army that was unusual for its time. It drew on French officers and artisans, on captured British boys forced into special battalions called chelas, and on the first iron-cased war rockets. This monograph brings those threads together in one study.It draws on contemporary captivity narratives, Mysorean, French, Portuguese and British records, and recent archaeology. Among the subjects covered are:the French military presence and its ties to the American and French Revolutions;Tipu’s relations with Portuguese Goa and the Kanara Christians;the capture, circumcision and drilling of the chelas;the narratives of James Scurry and James Bristow, who escaped, read critically;the fall of Seringapatam in 1799;the founding of the Anglo-Indian orphan schools, including Andrew Bell’s Madras asylum;the zenana and the legend of Tipu’s secret tunnels;the Mysorean rocket, from its design to Congreve’s adaptation, with a metallurgical and ballistic analysis.The book includes ten illustrations, a chronology, a glossary, a full bibliography with author-date citations, and an index.For readers of military history, the history of South Asia and the British Empire, the history of technology, and anyone interested in the origins of the Anglo-Indian community.