Cantonment

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Cantonment, Florida - town north of the Pensacola, Florida

A cantonment is a temporary or semi-permanent military quarters, typically in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Many cities in the Indian subcontinent, such as Ahmedabad, Belgaum, Bangalore, Ambala, Delhi, Pune and Rawalpindi, contained large cantonments of the former colonial British army. The word cantonment is derived from the French word canton meaning corner or district ^[1]. While in the 18th and 19th Century cantonments were viewed as semi-permanent, by the turn of the 20th Century they became permanent garrisons, and were further entrenched as such via the military reforms of Lord Kitchener in 1903 and the Cantonments Act of 1924.

[edit] List of Cantonments

India

India currently has 62 cantonments in 16 different states, not including smaller 'sub-cantonments' in the same regional area. The vast majority of Indian cantonments are spread across Northern, Northwestern and Northeastern India since the nation does not face any terrestrial military threats in the South. China and Pakistan lie beyond India's northern borders, both having proven themselves to be hostile to Indian strategic interests, and often acting in concert. The British Indian Army too was positioned for threats from across India's northern frontiers, as when the Great Game was in play in the 19th Century. The vast majority of modern Indian Army cantonments date from the British era, though all have been modernized, expanded and reconfigured to suit modern warfare, training requirements and inter-service considerations. A few have, over the decades, also been dissolved and/or combined with other cantonments.

They include: