The political economy of late eighteenth warfare is a relatively under researched theme in the debates over the establishment of a colonial dispensation in South Asia. This thesis seeks to engage with the changing politics of colonial warfare over the period c. 1775-1805. It is being argued here that the ubiquitous and incessant warfare of the period was productive of a specific early colonial order. The efforts at re-ordering civilian control of the military, effectively exercised by the civilian councils at Madras and Bombay, thus provide a useful entry into contested political terrains where early colonial state formation was transacted.