A01=Radhika Singha
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Asia
Author_Radhika Singha
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBWN
Category=JHBL
Category=NHWR5
Colonialism
COP=United Kingdom
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eq_history
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eq_nobargain
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India
Indian History
Language_English
Military History
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Price_€50 to €100
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softlaunch
World War I
Product details
- ISBN 9781787382152
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 03 Sep 2020
- Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Though largely invisible in histories of the First World War, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian army were non-combatants. From the porters, stevedores and construction workers in the Coolie Corps to those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, Radhika Singha recovers the story of this unacknowledged service.
The labour regimes built on the backs of these ‘coolies’ sustained the military infrastructure of empire; their deployment in interregional arenas bent to the demands of global war. Viewed as racially subordinate and subject to 'non-martial' caste designations, they fought back against their status, using the warring powers’ need for manpower as leverage to challenge traditional service hierarchies and wage differentials.
'The Coolie's Great War' views that global conflict through the lens of Indian labour, constructing a distinct geography of the war--from tribal settlements and colonial jails, beyond India's frontiers, to the battlefronts of France and Mesopotamia.
Radhika Singha is Professor of Modern Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests focus on the social history of crime and criminal law, identification practices, governmentality, borders and border-crossing.
