India in 1858

After the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the Indian Empire of the East India Company was taken over by the British Crown for direct administration. The Mutiny and its causes and impacts riveted interest of all communities of England on India. Obviously the Civil Government and Military Defence had to be reorganized and it was necessary that all concerned people should know what the actually existing system on which India had been depending was. At that moment, Indian taxation, law, and judicial procedure were the subjects of controversy in and outside the British Parliament. Many facts related to those subjects had to be made accessible to all concerned. These documents and facts are buried in the folios which contain the minutes of evidence obtained by the Parliamentary Committees and contemporary histories of India, interwoven with opinions, criticisms and suggestions. The purpose of the volume, originally published within a year of the Mutiny, is to disentangle the facts from opinions and to extricate the information from the mass of criticism and controversies. The author aimed at simply presenting, as faithfully and as concisely as possible, the mechinary of the Anglo-Indian Government as existed immediately before and after the Mutiny. The revenue map along with a table included in the volume is intended to offer data for a fair comparison of the various systems under which the Land Revenue of India was then collected. The facts and documents contained in this work are still very valuable source material to the students of British India and Indian politics.