Things I study IV

"The use of the Indian Army to extend and secure Britain's empire througout the vast region 'east of Suez' was no new phenomenon in 1875. The East India Company, from days of its first conquest, had deployed Indian troops eastward in Manila, Sumatra, and Malacca and to the west of India in Mauritius, the Persian Gulf, and Aden. Company troups participated as well in both opium wars in China [and in] the 1855 Persian war and the successive campaigns in Burma.[...]
India remained always, to be sure, a subordinate partner in the larger British Empire, but from Africa to eastern Asia, its army made possible that empire's very existence."

Metcalf, Thomas R.: "Imperial Connections - India in the Indian Ocean Area 1860-1920", Berkeley/Los Angeles 2007, S.68f.