At the Crossroads of Defeat: Sepoys, the French Company, and Military Mobility in Eighteenth-Century South India

In August 1778, Pondichéry, the French headquarters in India, surrendered to the British East India Company after a ten-day siege as the American Revolution spread around the world. The European combatants who defended the city were made prisoners of war, their movements surveilled and restricted by the British Company. However, the thousands of sepoys—Indian soldiers—who had fought alongside them were not subject to this control. These sepoys thus faced a pressing choice. Should they follow fleeing French officials to serve as soldiers in the Mascarenes? Stay in Pondichéry and hope for the French to return? Or seek out a new army in which to fight? Using service records and colonial correspondence, I situate sepoys’ movements within the Indian Ocean’s rich military labour networks. This analysis offers new insights into a category of mobility usually considered the purview of European adventurers and mercenaries. It reveals the complex ways in which colonial institutions intersected with broader regional markets and highlights sepoys’ agency in shaping those relationships.