As great powers clashed during World War I, another war raged in colonial Asia. In February 1915, Indian soldiers mutinied in Singapore following rumors that they would soon be sent to Egypt to fight fellow Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. Unable to control the rebellion, the British had to rely on European special constables and the support of the Japanese imperial consul to regain control of the city-island. This mutiny was part of a wider plot by the far-flung members of the Ghadar Party, an Indian anti-imperial movement started in California, to initiate a pan-Indian insurrection across the British Empire. A transnational network stretching from San Francisco to Kabul supported these efforts; Ghadarites worked in collaboration with German consulates, the Ottoman Empire, and Irish republicans to supply resources, especially arms, to Indian rebels. Imperial counterintelligence agents eventually managed to snuff out this revolution, but not before it shook the British Empire and its allies. The New York Times called the Singapore Mutiny the “greatest threat to British power in Asia” in over half a century.
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