Theme 8Part A · The British conquest
The Revolt of 1857
May 1857 to April 1859 · from Meerut to the end of the Company
In May 1857 the Company's sepoys at Meerut killed their officers and marched to Delhi. Within weeks most of north and central India between the Sutlej and Bihar had risen. This theme follows the revolt from spark to spread to suppression on two maps, and asks what kind of event it was.
Event 11757 to 1857
Why India rose in 1857
A hundred years after Plassey, grievances that had built up among almost every class came together at once. The cartridge was only the spark.
Doctrine of lapse (Satara, Jhansi, Nagpur), the annexation of Awadh (1856), Nana Saheb's pension refused, and the announcement that the Mughal title would end.
Heavy land revenue; talukdars of Awadh stripped of villages; the Inam Commission in Bombay seized 20,000 estates; artisans ruined by British goods.
Fear of conversion: missionaries, the Religious Disabilities Act (1850) letting converts inherit, the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act (1856), and rumours of bone dust in flour.
Sepoys outnumbered British troops about five to one but could not rise above subedar; the General Service Enlistment Act (1856) made overseas service compulsory; loss of the foreign service allowance (batta). Many sepoys of the Bengal army were from Awadh.
The new Enfield rifle, whose cartridges had to be bitten open, were said to be greased with cow and pig fat, an insult to Hindus and Muslims alike.
Event 2March to July 1857
Outbreak and spread
The revolt began in the barracks and spread along the Ganga plain, following the network of sepoy cantonments and the lands of the dispossessed rulers.
Swipe the map sideways to see all of it.
At Barrackpore near Calcutta, sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Native Infantry attacks his officers. He is hanged on 8 April and his regiment disbanded.
At Meerut, 85 sepoys who refused the cartridges are jailed. On 10 May their comrades free them, kill their officers and march through the night to Delhi. On 11 May they proclaim the old emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar Emperor of Hindustan.
In a few weeks the revolt spreads: Kanpur (Nana Saheb, Tantia Tope), Lucknow (Begum Hazrat Mahal), Jhansi (Rani Lakshmibai), Bareilly (Khan Bahadur Khan), Arrah and Jagdishpur (Kunwar Singh), Faizabad (Maulvi Ahmadullah), Allahabad (Liaqat Ali).
Who led where
| Leader | British commander | What happened to the leader | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delhi | Bahadur Shah Zafar; real command with General Bakht Khan | Nicholson, Hodson | exiled to Rangoon, died 1862 |
| Kanpur | Nana Saheb, with Tantia Tope and Azimullah Khan | Havelock, Campbell | fled to Nepal, fate unknown |
| Lucknow | Begum Hazrat Mahal, for her son Birjis Qadr | Havelock, Outram, Campbell | fled to Nepal |
| Jhansi | Rani Lakshmibai | Hugh Rose | killed fighting near Gwalior, June 1858 |
| Bareilly | Khan Bahadur Khan | Campbell | captured and hanged |
| Bihar | Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur, about 80 years old | William Taylor, Vincent Eyre | died of wounds, April 1858 |
| Faizabad | Maulvi Ahmadullah | Campbell | killed, 1858 |
| Allahabad | Liaqat Ali | Neill | captured in 1871 |
Event 3September 1857 to April 1859
The British recover
The rebels never had a single plan or command. The British, reinforced from Punjab, Britain and troops bound for China, retook the centres one by one.
Swipe the map sideways to see all of it.
From the Ridge above Delhi, a force largely brought from Punjab storms the city (14 to 20 September). John Nicholson is killed. Hodson captures Bahadur Shah at Humayun's tomb and shoots his sons.
Havelock retakes Kanpur (July 1857) after the massacres there. The British Residency at Lucknow holds out under siege until Campbell relieves it (November 1857); the city is retaken in March 1858.
Hugh Rose storms Jhansi (April 1858). Lakshmibai escapes to Kalpi, then with Tantia Tope seizes Gwalior. She is killed fighting there on 17 to 18 June 1858.
Kunwar Singh dies (April 1858); Tantia Tope carries on a guerrilla war across central India until betrayed, and is hanged at Shivpuri in April 1859. Nana Saheb and Begum Hazrat Mahal escape into Nepal.
Why the revolt failed
The south, Bengal proper, Punjab and most of Rajputana stayed quiet; Madras and Bombay armies stayed loyal.
Scindia, Holkar, the Nizam, Patiala, Jind and Kashmir helped the British; Canning called them breakwaters to the storm.
Each leader fought for his own lost rights; there was no agreed idea of what would follow British rule.
Telegraph, railways in parts, the Enfield rifle, steady reinforcements and capable generals.
The new middle class of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras saw the British as agents of modernisation and stayed away.
Areas that stayed quiet
- Punjab: newly conquered, its Sikh soldiers resented the Bengal sepoys who had helped defeat them.
- The south: risings were few and small.
- Bengal proper, after Barrackpore, and most of Bombay.
Smaller outbreaks did occur outside the heartland: Kolhapur and Satara in the west, and in Assam, where Maniram Dewan was hanged in 1858.
Event 41858 onwards
What changed after 1857
The revolt failed, but it ended the Company and changed the way Britain ruled India for the next ninety years.
- Government of India ActAugust 1858: the Company is abolished and India passes to the Crown
- Secretary of Statea British cabinet minister, advised by a 15 member Council of India
- Viceroythe Governor General now also the Crown's representative; Canning the first
- Queen's Proclamationread by Canning at Allahabad, 1 November 1858
Promises in the Proclamation
- No more annexation: the princes' territories, rights and adoptions to be respected.
- Religious non interference.
- Equal treatment and public office open to all, "of whatever race or creed".
- A general pardon, except for those who had killed British subjects.
Changes in practice
- Army reorganised: more British troops (about one to two), artillery in British hands only, and recruitment from "martial races" such as Sikhs, Gurkhas and Pathans, mixed by caste and region.
- Princes became pillars of British rule.
- Social reform slowed; the British allied with landlords and conservatives.
- Divide and rule: suspicion first fell on Muslims, then shifted to the educated classes.
Who's who18 people
People
Mangal Pandey
Barrackpore
Sepoy of the 34th Native Infantry; hanged 8 April 1857.
Bahadur Shah Zafar
Delhi
Last Mughal emperor; exiled to Rangoon; a poet in Urdu.
Bakht Khan
Delhi
Commander of the rebel army at Delhi.
Nana Saheb
Kanpur
Adopted son of Baji Rao II.
Tantia Tope
Kanpur and central India
Nana's general; guerrilla leader; hanged 1859.
Azimullah Khan
Kanpur
Nana Saheb's adviser.
Begum Hazrat Mahal
Lucknow
Wife of Wajid Ali Shah; led Awadh's revolt.
Rani Lakshmibai
Jhansi
Killed near Gwalior, June 1858.
Kunwar Singh
Jagdishpur, Bihar
Zamindar who led the revolt in Bihar.
Khan Bahadur Khan
Bareilly
Ran a rebel government in Rohilkhand.
Maulvi Ahmadullah
Faizabad
Called the Lighthouse of the Rebellion.
Maniram Dewan
Assam
Hanged in 1858.
Lord Canning
Governor General
First Viceroy; read the Queen's Proclamation.
John Nicholson
general
Killed storming Delhi.
Henry Havelock
general
Retook Kanpur.
Colin Campbell
Commander in Chief
Relieved and retook Lucknow.
Hugh Rose
general
Central India campaign; took Jhansi.
William Hodson
officer
Captured Bahadur Shah; shot his sons.
Key terms9
Terms
- Enfield rifle
- The new rifle whose greased cartridges sparked the revolt.
- General Service Enlistment Act
- 1856; made sepoys liable to serve overseas.
- Batta
- An extra allowance for service outside the sepoy's own region.
- Talukdar
- A large landholder of Awadh; many lost villages after 1856 and joined the revolt.
- Inam Commission
- Bombay inquiry that confiscated rent free lands without proper title.
- Queen's Proclamation
- 1 November 1858; announced Crown rule and its promises.
- Council of India
- Fifteen member advisory body to the Secretary of State for India.
- Martial races
- British theory that some communities made better soldiers; used to recruit after 1857.
- The Ridge
- High ground north of Delhi held by the British during the siege.
Mains angleHistoriography
What was the revolt of 1857?
A sepoy mutiny
Early British writers such as John Seeley: a military outbreak, wholly unpatriotic and selfish.
A Hindu Muslim conspiracy
James Outram and W. Taylor: a Muslim plot exploiting Hindu grievances.
A feudal reaction
Many Marxist and some Indian historians: the last stand of a dying feudal order.
The First War of Independence
V. D. Savarkar (1909), and in a different sense Marx, who called it a national revolt.
Neither first, nor national, nor a war of independence
R. C. Majumdar.
More than a mutiny, less than a national war
S. N. Sen: what began as a fight for religion ended as a war of independence.
For the answer: it began as a mutiny, drew in civil rebellion across a whole region, and had real popular support; it lacked a national vision, but Hindus and Muslims fought together under one emperor's name.