About this Event
Timetable
5.30pm Drinks Reception
5.45pm ish AGM
6.30pm ish Professor Martin Howard's talk. The talk will be face to face only.
7.30pm Attendees vacate the building
Please note that The East India Club is a private members club and we, as visitors are asked to respect the dress code, namely:
Gentlemen should wear a suit or jacket and tailored trousers together with collared shirt, tie, socks and shoes.
Ladies should aim to comply with the spirit of the code. Reasonable guidelines are dresses, smart separates, suits, tailored trousers. Footwear should be in keeping with a smart outfit. Formal boots below the knee are acceptable.
The following are examples of dress that is unacceptable: leather clothing and polo-neck sweaters for men, and for all, casual wear, denim-type material, sportswear, t-shirts, shorts, leggings, training shoes and casual footwear.
Notes on the talk:
Wellington and the British Army’s Indian Campaigns 1798–1805
The Peninsular War and the wider Napoleonic Wars across Europe are subjects of such enduring interest that they have prompted extensive research and writing, especially during the recent bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo. Yet other campaigns, in what was a global war, have been largely ignored. Such is the case for the war in India which persisted for much of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods and peaked in the years 1798–1805 with the campaigns of Arthur Wellesley — later the Duke of Wellington — and General Lake in the Deccan and Hindustan.
This was a brutal conflict in which British armies made up of the King’s regiments and native and European troops of the East India Company clashed with the formidable forces of the Sultan of Mysore and the Maratha princes. There were dramatic pitched battles at Assaye, Argaum, Delhi and Laswari, and epic sieges at Seringapatam, Gawilghur, and Bhurtpore. British success was not universal.
Wellington’s presence in India is a tangible link with the better-known European campaigns, but for him and his fellow officers, and the ordinary soldier, this was a different sort of war with even more extreme climate and terrain and an alien, often unyielding enemy.
Martin Howard is a former hospital consultant and honorary visiting professor at the University of York. He is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Pathologists, and of the Royal Historical Society. His main interest is in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century warfare, with a particular focus on the human dimension of these conflicts and the lesser-known campaigns. He is the author of Wellington’s Doctors (2002), Napoleon’s Doctors (2006), Napoleon’s Poisoned Chalice (2009), Walcheren 1809 (2012), Death Before Glory (2015), Wellington and the British Army’s Indian Campaigns 1798–1805 (2020), and The Fevered Fight (2023). He has recently contributed the chapter on military medicine to The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
East India Club, 16 Saint James's Square, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00