"A Matter of Honour" by Phillip Mason would help with the role of the military, both Indian and British. However, I would suggest that there was no "struggle for Indian colonies" between France and Britain. Britain and France were commercial and political rivals, on a global scale, but I would argue that their presence in India was almost entirely commercial, as was that of the Portuguese and the Dutch. Both the Brits and the French had been there for more than a century before serious military rivalry began. All four of the European nations had trading posts around the coasts of India and Ceylon, and all were profitable and all four nations were content with what they had, pretty much. However, with the mid-Eighteenth century hostilities between France and Britain, the conflict spread to India. Already France had involved itself in local power struggles between Indian rulers, and got even more involved once the Anglo-French wars extended to India. The two countries, essentially, got themselves more and more embroiled in local conflicts, and with each other. Not in a struggle for colonies, but in a struggle for favourable trading treaties with the local rulers. The result was, however, ultimately, a military and political victory for the Brits, which resulted in the HEIC being nominated as zemindars of areas of Eastern India and Bengal, ie land-holders or tenants of the Emperor in Delhi. It was the military defeat of the French and their allies, that led to British territorial acquisitions in India. It was only after France's defeat that the imperial idea was born; ie the wars led to territorial acquisition, they weren't for, or over territorial acquisition. Territorial acquisition was an almost accidental consequence of the conflict, not it's purpose.