1857: First War of Independence

Up to the nineteenth century, nothing had ever seriously threatened British rule in the Indian Sub-continent the way the happenings of 1857 did. In fact, the East India Company officials there were caught unawares and unprepared for such an unexpected ordeal. The revolution which broke out against the British rule, for some times gave a feeling that the British Empire would disappear from India. First time the people of India raised their strong voice against the mighty British. So the year 1857 is a defining period in Indian History. But the character of the great uprising of 1857 is controversial. The Scholars of England called the famous event of 1857 as the sepoy Mutiny. On the other hand some Indian historians have preferred to portray it as the “First war of Independence.” It is not justified to say that the great event was simply a sepoy mutiny. The problem of naming the events of 1857-59 is almost a commonplace in historical writings and not without reason, for the choice of a name implied an explanation of those events, and explanations were usually tied to political positions. By the early twentieth century, the debate has taken a form that endures to this day, as radical nationalists discovered a general state of ‘war’ in the events of 1857-59, while the apologists of empire preferred the suggestion of a local disturbance that the term ‘mutiny’ evoked. In this book we narrate the same history on the basis of some unpublished archival documents.