Catalogue description Bengal Army Records

The Presidency armies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay originated in small companies of European soldiers and locally enlisted Eurasian or Indian sepoys formed during the seventeenth century to guard the Company's factories. These early forces depended upon the Company's ships for artillery, they were numerically weak, and they were both haphazardly organised and ill-disciplined.

In 1748 the Company first apointed a Commander-in-Chief to co-ordinate all their forces in India, and also ordered that each Presidency should maintain a regular European artillery company. Increasing rivalry with the French and increasing involvement in Indian politics, leading to the first significant territorial gains, resulted in the growth of disciplined and effective Sepoy Battalions with European officers and in the development of much larger bodies, while British Army regiments temporarily posted to India provided a further stiffening of European troops. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, following various re-organisations, the familiar pattern of European artillery and infantry, and the Native cavalry and infantry with European officers, had emerged in each Presidency.

After the transfer of the Company's forces to the Crown in 1858 the European units were either amagamated with their British Army equivalents (artillery and engineers) or were re-numbered in the British Army sequences. The legality of automatic tranfer to the Britsh Army, involving liability for general service anywhere in the Empire, was bitterly disputed and as a result soldiers who had enlisted for the Company's armies were given the option of unpensioned discharge with a bounty, while a smaller number who were firmly entrenched in India were allowed to serve out their time in Local European units, which were gradually run down. Staff Corps were set up in the three Presidencies at the same time, to accommodate displaced officers.

In 1891 a united Indian Staff Corps was established and in 1895 the separate Presidency armies were formally abolished. The new Indian Army was divided into four commands - Bengal, Punjab, Madras and Burma, and Bombay - but the old territorial divisions lingered on until Kitchener's reforms of 1903-05, which created Northern, Western and Eastern Army Commands, divided into eight divisions, plus the 9th (Secunderabad) and Burma divisions.

The material in L/MIL/10-L/MIL/12 is essentially concerned with the European personnel of the Company's armies. It is usually necessary to turn to British Army records at the Public Record Office/National Archives for further information on enlisted men who continued to serve in India after 1861. There are, however, certain India Office Records series covering those who remained in India as members of local forces or as pensioners, while British Army NCOs and soldiers detached from their regiments for duty with Indian units or departments appear in the various runs of Unattached Lists.

L/MIL/10 is divided into the following sub-series:

L/MIL/10/1-19 Bengal Army Lists, 1781-1849.

L/MIL/10/20-69 Bengal Service Army Lists, 1759-1858

L/MIL/10/70-74 Bengal Service Army Lists - Medical, c1765-1858

L/MIL/10/75-102 Bengal Services, 1860-1893

L/MIL/10/103-107 Bengal Army Officers Casualty Returns, 1786-1895

L/MIL/10/108-121 Bengal Army Officers Miscellaneous, 1836-1896

L/MIL/10/122-129 Registers of Bengal Army European Soldiers, 1788-1860

L/MIL/10/130-185 Bengal Army Muster Rolls and Casualty Returns, 1716-1861

L/MIL/10/186-192 Bengal Army Soldiers Casualty Returns, 1800-1865

L/MIL/10/193-200 Bengal Army Quarterly Nominal Rolls, 1855-1859

L/MIL/10/201-252 Bengal Army Annual Returns - Unattached List, 1859-1907

L/MIL/10/253-300 Bengal Army Monthly Casualty Returns - Unattached List, 1866-1907

L/MIL/10/301-326 Bengal Army Discharges, 1820-1882.

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A Farrington, Guide to the Military Records, pp143-152; W Foster, Guide pp117-119