Indians, Anzacs and Gallipoli, 1915

As one of the world’s most populous nations, India today has one of its largest armies, which stands ready to defend the nation. A century ago, India’s army was similarly large but was used to defend the British empire as well as Britain’s Indian possessions. In 1914, the Indian Army (a force of about 200,000 men) provided a vast reservoir of trained military manpower, one immediately used by Britain as it entered the Great War. In the war’s earliest weeks, from August 1914, the Indian Army was mobilised for service, and within months the first Indian troops saw service against imperial Germany, in East Africa, but also on the Western Front in France and Belgium.