| Description |
1 online resource (392 pages) : illustrations (black and white) |
| Contents |
Indian labour and the geographies of the Great War -- Front lines and status lines: the follower ranks of the Indian Army -- Making the desert bloom?: The Indian Labour and Porter Corps in Iraq, 1916-21 -- The recruiter's eye on the 'primitive': those who went to the Great War and those who wouldn't -- The short career of the Indian Labour Corps in France: experiences and representations -- The ends of war: homecoming for the Indian soldier and follower, 1914-21 -- Afterword: labour inside and outside the army |
| Summary |
"Though largely invisible in histories of World War one, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian Army were followers or non-combatants. From porters and construction workers in the ‘Coolie Corps’, to ‘menial’ servants and those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, Radhika Singha draws upon their story to give the sub-continent an integral rather than ‘external’ place in this world –wide conflict. The labor regimes built on the backs of these 'coolies' had long sustained imperial militarism. This was particularly visible in the border infrastructures put in place by combinations of waged work, corvee, and, tributary labor.These work regimes, and the political arrangements which sustained them, would be bent to the demands of global war. This amplified trans-border ambitions and anxieties and pulled war zones closer home. Manpower hunger unsettled the institutional divide between Indian combatants and non-combatants. The ‘higher’ followers benefitted, less so the ‘menial’ followers, whose position recalled the dependency of domestic service and who included in their ranks the ‘untouchables’ consigned to stigmatised work. The book explores the experiences of the Indian Labor Corps in Mesopotamia and France and concludes with an exploration of the prolonged, complicated nature of the ‘end of the war’ for the sub-continent. The Coolie's Great War views the conflict unfolding over the world through the lens of Indian labor, bringing new social, spatial, temporal and sensory dimensions to the narrative"--Publisher's description |
| Notes |
Previously issued in print: 2020 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Audience |
Specialized |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (Oxford Scholarship Online, viewed on May 25, 2021) |
| Subject |
India. Army. Labour Corps -- History
|
|
World War, 1914-1918 -- India
|
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World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- India
|
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East Indians.
|
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War work.
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India.
|
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780197554562 (ebook) |
|
0197554563 (ebook) |
|
9780197566893 |
|
0197566898 |
|
