Peter Stanley

Temporary Sahibs: Terriers in India in 1917

Over 50,000 British Territorial soldiers—many pre-war citizen volunteers—served in India between 1914 and 1919, replacing British regular troops recalled to fight at Gallipoli and on the western front. In his chapter, Peter Stanley reveals a previously untold story, that of the experience of Territorials in India during the First World War, focusing on 1917. Many served in India for the entire war enforcing British rule, policing colonial dissent, and participating in operations on the north-west frontier and in the third Anglo-Afghan war. Stanley investigates both the effect of the service of the Territorials in India at one of the most crucial periods of the nationalist struggle and on the British citizen soldiers themselves who, for the duration of the war, became ‘temporary sahibs’.

Not only, but also: A short history of Honest History

The President of the newly-established group Honest History gives an overview of the development and remit of the group.

Imperial military history

Australian, New Zealand and Indian historians writing about war in the past century have made a crucial nexus between imperial relations and national consciousness. Constitutionally, their history has been literally post-colonial: since 1901 in the case of Australia, 1910 for New Zealand and 1947 for India. Their awareness as nations in historical writing, however, has been and largely remains figuratively post-colonial. All three nations have used their military history as a way of disengaging from the imperial past, a point established as a generalization in relation to New Zealand and especially India and tested in this chapter with detailed reference to Australia.