WW1 and its impact on British India (1914-20)

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  • Created by: pinderj
  • Created on: 22-05-16 16:50

WW1 and its impact on India

Advantages

  • Recruitment campaigns exceeded all expectations - India's contribution dwarfed all other imperial contributions to the war effort.
  • By November 1918, 827,000 Indians had enlisted as combatants.
  • Few Indians actually claimed to be fighting for India - most soldiers (according to their letters home from the front) felt that the King or the British Empire were worthy causes to fight for.
  • Fighting for whoever was their emperor was a well-established part of Indian tradition.
  • India poured men and materials into the Allied war effort.
  • The first India expeditionary force was made up of 16,000 British and 28,500 Indians of the Lahore and Meerut divisions and the Secunderabad cavalry. They were involved in the First Battle of Ypres.
  • The Lahore division was thrown into the counter-attack at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915.
  • Indians provided half of the Allied fighting force at Neuve Chapelle.
  • India contributed £146 million to the Allied war effort.
  • There were also positive economic impacts: Indian manufacturing industries (cotton, iron, steel, sugar, engineering and chemicals) expanded in order to replace goods which would normally have been imported.
  • Shareholders in Indian industry saw their dividends rocket.

Disadvantages

  • 64,500 Indian soldiers died in the war.
  • There were heavy Indian losses at the First Battle of Ypres.
  • The average Indian battalion comprised of 764 men but by early November, the 47th Sikhs were down to 385 fit soldiers.
  • It is thought that the two infantry divisions that were withdrawn from the Western Front were removed because they were suffering from low morale and the War Office feared that they would not survive another winter on the Western Front.
  • In December 1915, the British force was besieged at Kut-al-Amara and they eventually surrendered to the Turks on the 29th April 1916. thousands of British and Indian troops were forced to march across the desert to the Turkish prisoner-of-war camps and hundreds died on the way and inside the camps.
  • Economic impacts in India:- Increased taxation.- Shortages of fuel.- Rising prices (for example, prices of food grains rose by 93%, of Indian-made goods by 60% and of imports by 190%). - Normal trading was disrupted.- Exchange rate problems
  • The situation was made worse by the failure of the Monsoon to arrive in 1918-19 - there were consequent grain shortages and famine.
  • By 1918, the viceroy's office was receiving regular reports from provincial legislatures or rioting and petty violence.
  • The Raj could have been under serous threat but it was fortunate that these outbreaks were only sporadic because the Raj would have struggled to cope with a mass movement - by March 1915, there was not a single British battalion left in India.

Evaluation

The outbreak of war in Europe was met with instant declarations of loyalty from all parts of Indian society. Congress, the Muslim League and the princely states all offered support - 27 of the largest princely states put their armies and a hospital ship (named 'Loyalty') at the disposal of the British, Even the leader of the more radical faction in Congress, Bal Tilak, declared his loyalty and Gandhi-at this point  felt that it was important for Indians to show their interest in being a part of the British Empire. In December 1915, two infantry divisions were withdrawn from France and sent to the Middle East where it was though that they would be better suited to the climate + it would be easier to send reinforcements from India. However, this led to disaster as Indian troops took part in a campaign against the Ottoman Turks in Iraq. They were badly led and under equipped - Indian industry was not geared up to the production of weapons and vehicles - the Allies couldn't afford to divert supplies from Europe.  Two Indian cavalry divisions remained on the Western Front until March 1918, when they were transferred to Palestine to take part in operations against the Turks.By the end of the war, 1.5 million Indians had been recruited into combatant and non-combatant roles and nearly all (along with 184,350 animals) were send overseas. Nationalists hoped that by showing their commitment to membership of the British Empire, they would gain concessions from the British after the war.   

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JetFire

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Good stuff man!

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