From 2,900 sepoys in 1757 after Plassey, the Bengal army had grown to around 50,000 men by the arrival of Cornwallis.32 The Company also had the pick of the best candidates in the military labour market since it paid its sepoys significantly more, and more regularly, than anyone else: Bengal army sepoys classed as ‘gentlemen troopers’ earned around Rs300 a year, while their equivalents in Mysore earned annually only Rs192 (four times the Rs48 Tipu paid an ordinary soldier); those in Avadh earned annually as little as Rs80.*33 As Burton Stein nicely put it: ‘The colonial conquest of India was
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