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The Indian Mutiny 1857

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There is a lot of good material in this book. Some of it rather interesting and unique for those who are interested in the history of the subcontinent.

David spends about 80 pages on the causes of the mutuny. His focus is upon the operational word "mutiny" -- what caused a select group of the Bengal Army to mutiny against their colonial masters in 1857. David focuses upon the start of the army, its composition, the pay rates, internal reforms that happenned or were called for, and their results. Of particular interest is the pay scales of the sepoys and the sowars, the caste particularities and the gradual erosion of the British Army officers who traditionally been very much locally oriented on the welfare of their troops and how latterly they grew detached and no longer diffident. The overt racism of the many junior officers and the respect of the mostly senior officers.

The general political situation is analysed in the context of the most recent annexation of Oudh and the dispossession of the traditional power base of the princely rulers in this region and their inability to find recourse (largely) in the English legal system. But the whole ideological issue of colonial rule -- which was being practised by every European country -- is largely ignored as the focus is upon direct and indirect causes of the mutiny.

The greased cartridge issue is also anlysed in greater detail than I have seen before. With the startling declaration that no cow or pig tallow cartridges ever having been delivered to the native troops before the rebellion.

Rouges and villians are replete on both sides, as are heros. The bloodthirsty-ness of both sides (the British over-reaction being particularly notable). There were also those who were swept along with events such the ineffectual King of Dehli, who tried to play both sides.

This is not a book for those who are looking for an ideological tract either to defend or renounce the British rule of India. It is a good historical narrative on the events of the "Great Indian Mutiny." It should be sobering reading for anyone who wants to analyse how long term implications of British policy in the subcontinent, and also how the native elements either did or did not cooperate in their battle against the common enemy.

Also as some of the ideologists have written their reviews, it is far from certain how much this event comprised a mass "national" uprising. This point is still hotly debated within the Indian historical community with the balance of the view of course highly critical of the British, but also questioning any sense of true national consciousness beyond escape from day-to-day injustices and some, such as the princes, for worldly gain.

Certainly David agrees that the average Indian serviceman had all the pecuniary reason in the world to revolt.

A excellent well researched account of the mutiny, puts to rest many of the victorian myths of the event

This book is a useful; start to studying the events of 1857, when the people of India fought for their national sovereignty and for independence from the British Empire.
The Empire's servants called, and some still call, the revolt a `Mutiny', defining it as illegitimate. But it was the foreign rule that was illegitimate, because it denied India democracy and self-rule. As G. B. Malleson, Adjutant-General of the Bengal Army and the revolt's first historian, wrote, what was "at first apparently a military mutiny ... speedily changed its character and became a national insurrection." Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all played a full part.
The Raj was a despotic regime dependent on military power. From the 1780s, the Imperial dogma was, "we acquired our Influence and Possessions by force, it is by force we must maintain them." As Lord James Bryce wrote in 1912, "The government of India by the English resembles that of her possessions by Rome in being virtually despotic." General Henry Rawlinson, India's Commander-in-Chief, said in 1920, "You may say what you like about not holding India by the sword, but you have held it by the sword for 100 years and when you give up the sword you will be turned out. You must keep the sword ready to hand and in case of trouble or rebellion use it relentlessly. Montagu calls it terrorism, so it is and in dealing with natives of all classes you have to use terrorism whether you like it or not."
In 1793, the Empire's rulers had imposed a `Permanent Settlement' on India which privatised the land and dispossessed the peasants. The Empire took 50-60% of the peasants' income in tax, more than the Mughal Emperors had taken, forcing the peasants into debt and then to sell their land to the bunyahs, the moneylenders. India's wealth was pillaged and her agriculture starved, in order to rack profit and rent up. The profits went to British investors, the rents to the Empire's allies, the landlords and princes. The British enquiry commission of 1832 admitted, "The settlement fashioned with great care and deliberation has to our painful knowledge subjected almost the whole of the lower classes to most grievous oppression." Charles Ball, a historian of the revolt, wrote, "in Bengal an amount of suffering and debasement existed which probably was not equaled and certainly not exceeded, in the slave-sates of America."
The Empire's rule was vicious. Governor-General Lord Dalhousie wrote in 1855, "torture in one shape or other is practised by the lower subordinates in every British province." The Report of the Commission for the Investigation of Alleged Cases of Torture at Madras, 1855, admitted `the general existence of torture for revenue purposes'. Torture was also normal police practice.
The revolt was violent, though nowhere near as bloody as its suppression. Karl Marx noted of Britain's newspapers, "while the cruelties of the English are related as acts of martial vigour, told simply, rapidly, without dwelling on disgusting details, the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated." A British officer said, "We hold court-martials on horseback, and every nigger we meet with we either string up or shoot."
Although the revolt was defeated, it did overthrow the East India Company's rule and its regime of robbery and corruption; the Company was wound up in 1874. After suppressing the revolt, India's British rulers used the old tactic of divide and rule to crush India's strivings for democracy and self-rule. "Divide et impera was the old Roman motto and it should be ours", Lord Elphinstone advised in 1859. The British state promoted Muslim separatism and set up separate electorates, a sure way to tear people politically apart. In the Punjab, the British won over the Sikhs by reminding them of the injuries and insults they had suffered under the Mughal Emperors. Sir Henry Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of Oudh, spread false rumours that Muslim rebels had desecrated Hindu temples.
The Empire then used the revolt's failure to justify their continued rule. If Indians could not revolt successfully, they could not rule themselves. Besides, as an MP said, "if we were to leave ... we should leave it to anarchy." The Empire's servants stressed its `superior' qualities of race and religion and its mission to `pacify' and `civilise' the Indians' `savagery'. As the Viceroy Sir John Lawrence wrote modestly, "we are here through our moral superiority, by the force of circumstances and by the will of Providence." But as a critic of empire noted, "a mission, historically speaking, is little more than another name for a tendency to rapine."
A century later, Winston Churchill said in Cabinet in 1940 that the Hindu-Moslem division had long been "a bulwark of British rule in India". The Times agreed, "The divisions exist and British rule is certain as long as they do." John Colville reported that in Cabinet, "Winston rejoiced in the quarrel which had broken out afresh between Hindus and Moslems, said he hoped it would remain bitter and bloody."
After the revolt, the Indian people continued to oppose foreign rule, winning their independence in 1947. Once the majority of a country's people want an occupier out, no amount of military force can keep the occupier in.

Right from the title you know that you are reading a piece of history which is rather controversial. I am surprised that some of the now politically correct Brits still try and pass this incident off as a Mutiny rather than what it was - The First War of Indian Independence. If building the railways, introducing educational reform are reasons why certain historians pass off the British Raj as a force of good - that is like saying Nazis were a force of good for building their authobahns and the Luftwaffe. Everyone though is entitled to their view - including the erstwhile colonists. I shall always see my nation being colonized as something bad overall - all the railways, education etc. would not be worth it even for one loss of life - and India lost millions either fighting wars in Germany, Italy, Africa for wars which were not theirs to fight or through famines in Bengal - lots of them were transplanted to South America or Fiji as indentured servants or taken to Africa to build railways. As a side note - the very free market which they used to exploit Indians is now being used by Indians to take away the higher paying jobs of the Brits. Poetic justice.

Coming to the book itself, it seeks to justify the British excesses as an act of self-defence in a reactive mode. It's almost as if the author already knew what he wanted to write before embarking on his research. Most of his research is based on British sources. To claim that 160 years ago, these sources adhered to a Neutral Point of View is laughable. This book is so skewed toward justifying British excesses that it borders on being racist.