India, Oct. 30 -- In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, field sports were considered an important source of individual character-building and national and imperial well-being. Shooting was an integral part of the project, used to assert masculinity. It also offered "well-regulated enjoyment" and was connected with "all that is manly, energetic, and healthful", as the writer-academic Robert Blakey put it.

The young British soldiers and officers coming to India in the nineteenth century found themselves in an exotic world where they wielded power and, compared to the native population, immense riches. They came to look upon India as a place where they might be able to indulge in shooting, and they were not disappointed. Opportunities of big a...