Author: Andrew Ward
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780719564109
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 703
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Book Description
This is the first full account of the siege and massacre at Cawnpore. In the maelstrom of India's Great Mutiny of 1857, the European garrison at Cawnpore survived starvation and bombardment only to die brutally on the eve of rescue. To avenge their deaths and reassert imperial will, thousands of Indians were hanged along the British line of march or tied to guns and blown to pieces. Courage, folly, rage, fanaticism, horror, fortitude - all can be found here. But this is not just a saga of bloodshed following upon bloodshed; it is a demonstration of an essential rite of imperial progress. The cycle of massacre and retribution at Cawnpore advanced the empire by drowning out its critics in the fire and brimstone of British vengeance.
Author: Saul David
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550
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Book Description
The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was the bloodiest insurrection in the history of the British Empire. It began with a large-scale uprising by native troops against their colonial masters, and soon developed into general rebellion as thousands of discontented civilians joined in. It is a tale of brutal murder and heroic resistance from which innocents on both sides could not escape. This work covers the story of the Mutiny. It challenges the accepted wisdom that a British victory was inevitable, showing just how close the mutineers came to dealing a fatal blow to the British Raj.
Author: Sir Sayyid Aḥmad K̲h̲ān̲
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
Author: Kim A. Wagner
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781906165277
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
The Indian Uprising of 1857 had a profound impact on the colonial psyche, and its spectre haunted the British until the very last days of the Raj. For the past 150 years most aspects of the Uprising have been subjected to intense scrutiny by historians, yet the nature of the outbreak itself remains obscure. What was the extent of the conspiracies and plotting? How could rumours of contaminated ammunition spark a mutiny when not a single greased cartridge was ever distributed to the sepoys? Based on a careful, even-handed reassessment of the primary sources, The Great Fear of 1857 explores the existence of conspiracies during the early months of that year and presents a compelling and detailed narrative of the panics and rumours which moved Indians to take up arms. With its fresh and unsentimental approach, this book offers a radically new interpretation of one of the most controversial events in the history of British India.
Author: Alan Lester
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108426204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
Reveals how the British Empire's governing men enforced their ideas of freedom, civilization and liberalism around the world.
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781542344494
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 82
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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the rebellion *Includes a bibliography for further reading The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire. As a private company that became a non-state global power in its own right, the East India Company also serves as a cautionary tale all too relevant to the modern world's current political and economic situation. In Bengal, the region where the rebellion that would change British-Indian relations permanently took place, the Company shared power with a local nawab. The Company was given increasing responsibility, including the power to collect taxes, or Diwani, in 1773. Many have criticized this "Dual Authority" of both local Indian rulers and the rule of Company officials as allowing for greater corruption and creating anger and resentment throughout Bengal. Though a defender of Britain's contributions to India's history and economy, Kartar Lalvani calls the Company's collection of the Diwani "short-sighted greed" and charges the Company with a "horrendous blunder concerning the role of revenue collection." To the Indian people, the events of 1857 are known as the first War for Independence. For the British, the time is referred to as a mutiny, an uprising, or a rebellion. It is ironic that a similar story played out just under 100 years earlier, during the American Revolution, or as the Americans called it, the War for Independence. Whatever the moniker, in 1857, one of the Indian armies, the Bengal, mutinied. In the most cursory histories of the period, the cause of the rebellion is simply cited as an oversight, a change in the type of grease used in powder cartridges rumored to contain animal fat. This revelation horrified both Hindus and Muslims. The British response, which either failed to recognize the need to address the growing rumors or attempted to force Muslim and Hindu soldiers to use the ammunition despite their objections, made things worse. Author John McLeod explains that though the controversy over animal-greased rifle cartridges was the immediate cause of the conflict, economic, religious, and political resentment existed and had been worsening throughout 1856. He also argues that rather than the uprising being attributable to either one incident or one cause - such as concerns over attempts at religious conversion by Christian officers, anger at the British in general, or frustration over specific tax policies - the rebellion was fueled not only by those with specific complaints against the British, but by those who sought to end up on the right sight of history. McLeod argues that many Indians joined the rebellion only after the tide seemed to be turning in favor of Indian rebels: "In general, the deciding factor was whether or not such leaders felt that their interests and those of the people under their command would be best served by ending British rule." McLeod concludes that the basis of the mutiny was ultimately economic, observing that "the commercial and educated classes of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras had prospered under Company dominance, and held back." An estimated 80,000 Indians and over 5,000 British were killed during the rebellion, often horrifically, and as British historian Percival Griffiths said of the rebellion in retrospect, "It is useless to pass judgment on these excesses on both sides. Cruelty begets cruelty, and after a certain stage of suffering and horror justice and judgment give way to the demand for vengeance."
Author: George Bruce Malleson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 486
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Book Description
Author: James Kennedy (missionary.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
Author: Lady Julia Selina Thesiger Inglis
Publisher: London : James R. Osgood, McIlvaine & Company
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
Author: John Harris
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
ISBN: 9781840222326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was a huge and bloody struggle, a devil's wind of retribution and death that swept across the jungles, hills and parched plains of the Indian sub-continent.
