Studies on colonial history have long been trapped either by the binary framework of the imperial history or by the linear narrative of the national history.However,the past of transnational subjects such as the Sikh policemen in Southeast and East Asia cannot be properly studied in both paradigms.This article tries to reconstruct the experience of those overseas Sikh servicemen by employing a transnational approach.Through connecting the colonial rule in India with what happened in Singapore,Hong Kong and Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,this paper examines how the mechanism of a colonial network shaped the birth and development of the Sikh police units in different colonies and settlements.