Two centuries ago, the military forces of the East India Company were the British empire’s largest armies. Rightly regarded as ‘an extraordinary phenomenon’, they comprised a huge multi-ethnic force, the largest disciplined army in Asia and arguably the key element in Britain’s conquest of the Indian sub-continent. In 1857 the mutiny-rebellion utterly transformed this unique force. In this podcast two of the foremost military historians of British India look at the heyday of the Company’s Armies. Professor Peter Stanley of UNSW Canberra, author of the forthcoming book John Company's Armies, discusses these unique but obscure forces with one of India's foremost military historians, Squadron-Leader Rana Chhina.