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- Title
Army Recruitment and Patron - Client Relationship in Colonial Punjab: A Grassroots Perspective.
- Authors
Mahmood, Tahir
- Abstract
This article, in the light of revealing new sources, sheds fresh light on the patron-client relationship and the way it impacted on the recruitment process. It not only adds to our knowledge of the Punjab's military history but enhances our understanding about the functioning of collaboration in rural and urban settings. The case study material drawn from the Shahpur District of Colonial Punjab argues that patron-client ties were stronger in the rural areas. The different patterns between towns and countryside reflected the more even urban social landscape. Patron-client ties certainly existed within them, but did not have the same power and density as in the rural setting. Therefore they were less crucial in raising recruits in the towns as compared to the rural areas. It was in the countryside that 'voluntary' recruitment was most clearly tied with social hierarchies and above all the patron-client relationship between landowners and tenants, clan leaders and their less powerful kinsmen. Moreover, attachment of recruits to their 'family regiment' was a feature that was common to both rural and urban areas.
- Subjects
RECRUITING &; enlistment (Armed Forces); PATRONAGE; CITIES &; towns; LANDOWNERS; SOCIAL hierarchies
- Publication
Pakistan Vision, 2015, Vol 16, Issue 2, p242
- ISSN
1681-5742
- Publication type
Article