When that regiment was disarmed at Phillour by General John Nicholson during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he took part in the final capture of Lucknow as adjutant of the 11th Bengal Lancers.

[citation needed] In February 1871, he was given political control over the warring Marri, Bugti and Mazari tribes of the Sulaiman Hills at the Mithankot conference between the then governments of Punjab and Sindh provinces.

[2] During the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1878 his influence over the tribesmen was of the utmost importance, since it enabled him to keep intact the line of communications with Kandahar, and to control the tribes after the British disaster at Maiwand.

At a conceptual level, the idea of colonial rulers bringing order to the colonized territory has been questioned by authors such as Edward Said and Nicholas Dirks who argue that this myth resulted from a misunderstanding of (mostly unwritten) local social and cultural norms.

In respect of colonial Balochistan, Simanti Dutta points out that Sandeman skillfully exploited an existing rift between the Baloch ruler, the Khan of Kalat, and his subordinate tribal chiefs to leverage his influence and project British power into a region which was strategically significant in the context of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Afghanistan.

suggests that there were a number of armed uprisings against British rule in Balochistan during and after Sandeman's tenure which had to be put down through the use of lethal force and imposition of crippling financial penalties on the defaulting tribes[citation needed].