British cantonments in India were influenced by the concept of the cantonment from the Mughal practice of mobile government. The cantonment was simply an ossified military camp and was laid out accordingly. A majority of them possess a simple grid pattern of avenues lined with classical bungalows, counter pointed with the great institutions of British India like; the club, the church and the racecourse.

In the later half of the eighteenth century, the British enjoyed unprecedented security and power. Most of the areas of the subcontinent were under indirect or direct control. A new military strategy was developed, established on the rapid deployment of artillery and troops, which had sound consequences for the layout and form of cities and towns. The density of European troops in city strongholds were replaced due to the growth of separate military camps or cantonments on the periphery. This has come as a major change in the pattern of European settlement, by separating the ruling European elite classes from the general Indian masses. This also marked another step in the physical separation of the rulers from the ruled. Separated from the teeming bazaars of the native quarters and cushioned from the squalor and chaos of local day-to-day life, the British formed a wholly separate existence, which became increasingly distant from the real India of the masses. Although this encouraged aloof, impartial government motivated by the highest ideals, it also nurtured arrogant concepts of racial superiority in contrast to the easy relationship which had characterized the earlier years of British East India Company Rule.

Almost all the prominent towns and cities in the British ruled India has its cantonment area, which is divided into civil and military lines. Barrackpore, outside the city of Kolkata (Calcutta), is one of the examples. It was the summer residence of the Governor-General. Originally favoured by Lord Wellesley, it stayed as a favourite hot-weather retreat and boasts a several interesting monuments like the Temple of Fame, a Greek temple dedicated as a war memorial in the memory of the officers who fell in the conquest of Java and Mauritius in the year 1811. Varanasi (Benares) holds an interesting cantonment area with a large number of early houses, including the Nandeswar Kothi and the Old Mint. The cantonment area at Patna in the state of Bihar is dominated by a huge beehive structure called the Gola, constructed in the year 1786, to the designs of Colonel John Garstin as a storehouse for grain in time of famine, one of the most extraordinary buildings erected by the British Empire in India.