Why didn't the UK flood the battlefield with Indian troops in WW1?

Also India had indeed a centuries long fighting tradition of British military service. This was not a nation of pacifists.

I think the situation was more complex. Rather, proportionally small numbers of select Indians had a long tradition of service to the British Empire. These particular Indians could then be sub divided into truly deployable, long standing, "Category A" battalions with reputations for excellence and other less reliable Category "B" battalions that were not truly deployable beyond para-military police duties. Potential Category "C" units comprised of Indian conscripts could be even more problematic.
 
however do you honestly think India had a shortage of adequately healthy men to serve and fight?
I have not suggested either way. I have asked if you have considered such factors.
Even if the proportional percentage of able bodied men was much lower than in the white colonies we're still talking about a magnitude of times larger population base. So yes especially in a war like WW1 the amount of men available for war was important. One of the reasons Germany became so powerful by 1914 was the leap in population it had over France in the 19th century.
I stand corrected, you have based the entirety of your hypothesis upon population size. I assumed the farmer analogy would suffice in demonstrating the folly of this line of reasoning, but fair enough.
 
Nope, it's very simple. India has a big population, countries with smaller populations have fielded large armies, therefore India can field a larger army. Full stop. :rolleyes:

Sure, India can field a larger army. "Can", however, does not mean "will". This is especially so when the larger army would be largely conscript based and be in the service of a colonial power.
 
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I don't think British army policy has ever been to allow you to take your equipment home with you.

In G. A. Fraser's last "McAuslan" story, the post-war period is ending and both the narrator (Lt. MacNeill) and Private McAuslan are being demobbed. McAuslan wants to keep his old bayonet. (It got lost in the bottom of his kit bag, and he was required to buy a replacement.) The sergeant in charge objects anyway, due to the army policy noted above.


McCauslan appeals to MacNeill. He's paid for it, so he's entitled to keep it. Though MacNeill notes that "giving cold steel to a Glasgow man is tantamount to running guns to the Apaches", he supports McAuslan, who is unlikely to use the bayonet in a gang fight: what gang would take him?
 
In G. A. Fraser's last "McAuslan" story, the post-war period is ending and both the narrator (Lt. MacNeill) and Private McAuslan are being demobbed. McAuslan wants to keep his old bayonet. (It got lost in the bottom of his kit bag, and he was required to buy a replacement.) The sergeant in charge objects anyway, due to the army policy noted above.


McCauslan appeals to MacNeill. He's paid for it, so he's entitled to keep it. Though MacNeill notes that "giving cold steel to a Glasgow man is tantamount to running guns to the Apaches", he supports McAuslan, who is unlikely to use the bayonet in a gang fight: what gang would take him?

I can confirm that, as of 1982, it was quite possible for someone leaving the service to depart with cutlery of assorted sizes of sentimental value to the individual. To take a not-so random example, it was possible for a Royal Marine to end up as a former Royal Marine in possession of a Khurkri (it's a long story), an 18th Century Sgian Dubh (it's a very long story), a Commando knife, and a couple of other bits and pieces.

It's not policy, but it happens, and if one is discrete, no-one worries too much about it. Obviously, things that go bang aren't quite so easy to walk off with.
 
The British were worried about an uprising in India since the Sepoy Mutiny in the 1800s to such an extent that even European hunters have difficulty getting their modern rifles through customs (the rifles may even have been banned outright). The British probably wouldn't have wanted to have millions of Indians come to Europe to learn how to fight because they could cause trouble for them when repatriated.

However, the Entente relied extensively on Chinese guest workers for various supporting roles during World War I, and Indians might have been able to fill some of those roles.

THIS ( filler )
 
How efficient was Indian food production?

Societies in which food production is largely relatively inefficient subsistence farming have trouble supporting large standing armies.

When men go into the army, they do not produce food; someone else must produce food to support both them and whomever else the recruits were previously producing food for (their nuclear and/or extended families).

I suspect that if you took very many more Indians away as soldiers, you'd get even more famine in the sub-continent; plus, who raises or buys/ships the food to support all those extra soldiers? I'd bet that India wouldn't be able to. And Britain needed every quid (and every ship) for its own food, weapons and munitions.
 
And how much shipping would have been tied up bring these troops to Europe?

I have a nasty suspicion that if the British government did start thinking along these lines, it would look to Ireland, which is so much nearer than India. However, an attempt to conscript Irishmen in 1918 could have all sorts of consequences.
 
Well, there's always that other british colony, somewhat closer to home...

At least they spoke english (sort of) and you didn't have to wonder about their loyalty :)

Just extend conscription to Ireland in say late 1916 and watch the show...
 
During the period of WW1 the UK was still firmly in control of India. Why didn't it take much advantage of its enormous population to flood the field with an almost endless supply of troops on its side?

British India in 1907 had aprox. 290 million people, Germany at that same time 67 million, the UK itself roughly 40 million.

Yes, the vast majority would not be up to fighting caliber but again the numbers sent in could have been so overwhelming that it could arguably have made-up for that fact.

What, precisely is going to get this vast population to tolerate conscription? As it is, recruitment to the Indian Army was pretty selective, and based on what the British perceived as "martial races".

As it was, they did open up their recruitment- my great-grandfather was, I found out to my surprise, on the Mesopotamian Campaign. To my surprise because we really weren't one of the martial communities you would have expected to see in British service. It only came up because back in 2014 my grandmother saw something on TV about the commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the war turned to me and said "My father was there, at Basra. He always used to talk about Basra. Not in the second War, the Great war."
 
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