1857 Indian Uprising

By Whitney Howarth

In 1857, uprisings and rebellions ended the British East India

Company’s (EIC) control in India, then it became an official British
colony. Historians continue to debate the nature of these uprisings.
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1857 Indian Uprising
Whitney Howarth

Imperialism in South Asia

In 1783, Great Britain, stinging from the American Revolution and loss of 13 promising colonies, took a closer
look at the Indian subcontinent. The British East India Company (EIC) intensified its efforts to collect taxes and
dominate territories in this vast, populous region. Sometimes simply called “the Company” the EIC was indeed
a business that did international trade. But it also conquered and ruled over an increasing number of Mughal
territories and independent princely states, so its “business” was pretty much imperialism. Under a policy called
the Doctrine of Lapse, the EIC took control over more than 25 states in India in the 1800s. This policy meant that if
the British deemed the rulers of those states “incompetent,” or if they lacked a proper heir, the EIC could just take
over the territory and rule it directly themselves. Any resistance to EIC control was met with a military response.
That included British troops as well as thousands of locally recruited Indian troops called sepoys. Let’s look at
the expansion of British control on the Indian subcontinent and the differing perspectives of the 1857 uprising by
Indians against “the Company.”

Sepoy Soldiers
If you were a young man in India needing an honest job that paid well, joining the Company army as a sepoy would
have been appealing. However, once employed you would soon be faced with racial discrimination and your
religious beliefs would be challenged by EIC policies. Whether Muslim or Hindu, you and your fellow sepoys would
be expected to adapt your religions and culture to the needs of the army. Also, you could forget about ever being
promoted to higher ranks in the army, because only your British co-workers would get those jobs. Sepoys helped
expand the domination of the East India Company across South Asia and were shipped abroad to expand the British
Empire overseas. By the 1800s, the Mughal Empire was a much smaller and weaker state, whose authority was
recognized only by some princes and local governors. Most stopped supporting the Mughal army and paying taxes.
The central authority of the Mughals was so weak they could offer little resistance to the East India Company and its
increasingly massive sepoy army.

By the mid-1800s, many Indians, including a number of sepoys, were frustrated with living under EIC control.
Excessive taxation, mismanagement, racist regulations, and the continuing disrespect for local and religious
customs were becoming intolerable. In 1857, a series of uprisings broke out in and around several military stations.
These rebellions expressed various outrages that had troubled many communities for decades.

The Spark that Lit the Fire

The first of these uprisings was in May 1857, at a cantonment (military station) called Meerut, 40 miles outside the
capital city of Delhi. Interestingly, the most heated issue—among many—had to do with how you loaded your gun.
Stories had been spreading that the new bullet cartridges for their new Enfield rifles were being greased with
animal fat derived from pigs and cows. The greased cartridges had to be opened by biting off the top with your
teeth. However, nearly every sepoy was either Muslim—a religion that forbids eating the fat or any other part of a
pig, or Hindu—where the same rule applies to cows. The British in India had long showed insensitivity for cultural
and religious traditions, and that disturbed both the sepoys and civilians. Many worried that the foreigners wanted
to forcibly convert them to Christianity. When some of the sepoys, in religious observation, disobeyed orders to sink
their teeth into the fat-greased ammunition, they were sentence to prison.

As several sepoys rose up to free their comrades, some British officers were killed. Violence quickly spread and
several European women and children were also killed. Crowds in Meerut attacked and killed off-duty military
officers as well as several non-British servants who tried to protect their British masters. The next day, the sepoys

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Whitney Howarth

reached Delhi and mobbed the British arsenal and the home of former Mughal Emperor. Rebel soldiers and anti-
British civilians called for the re-instatement of the old Mughal Emperor who reluctantly agreed to their demands.

News spread fast, inspiring more mutinies in other garrison1 towns and disturbances in districts across the north
and northeast of India. By the end, over 50,000 sepoys had died or were executed later, whether or not they were
guilty of participating in the revolt. Another 100,000 civilians were killed by British efforts to put down the rebellion
and take revenge. The chaos that followed also contributed to a major famine that killed even more people.

English engraving from 1857 showing mutinous sepoys dividing up spoils. Public domain.

That doesn’t mean all of India was rebelling. Many sepoys and garrisons remained loyal to the British and helped to
put down the rebellion while supporting British troops that were shipped in. From Punjab to Nepal, people of
different religions and languages joined the rebellion. When the Mughal emperor’s sons were captured by the British
outside Delhi, they were executed without a trial. These and other atrocities of vengeance continued across India as
the British sought to punish rebels and terrify communities that had sheltered them. The British sought to create a
campaign of fear and terror to make sure no one would challenge British authority again.

It took a full year for the British to put down the revolt and re-establish its control over Indian society. By 1858, the
East India Company no longer governed India and the East India Company was dissolved by the British. The British
Queen Victoria became the sole sovereign of the subcontinent and India became an official colony of the British
Empire for nearly 100 more years.

1 A garrison is a group of troops stationed in a town for the purpose of defending it. The word can also refer to the building those troops occupy
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Whitney Howarth

Mutiny, Revolt, or War of Independence?

The revolts that took place in 1857-1858 continue to
interest historians. Many debate the causes,
consequences, and what to even call these events. Was it
a war for independence by the Indians? A mutiny of sepoy
soldiers against the British? A larger rebellion against the
East India Company and Great Britain? Each answer
represents a point of view.

Some Indian nationalists say this was an organized

revolution to gain independence from British rule. It was
seen as a singular revolt of colonial subjects against
foreign imperialists. However, many scholars of Indian
history see these events differently, arguing that India
wasn’t a nation yet. It had never been a fully unified state
with a singular system of government nor was there a
common national identity with well-defined boundaries.

We know that there were many reasons people rebelled

against the British EIC. Some fought to protect the
markets of cotton cloth weavers, some fought to end
the heavy tax burdens for landlords, and still others
fought in response to new land laws which forced the
eviction of poor peasants from lands. Some rebels also
fought to stop the annexation of their princely states—
the “doctrine of lapse” referred to in the introduction—
while others fought to cease the increasing influence of
Christian missionaries.

In fact, scholars have long debated the role of religion in

the events of 1857. While most agree that this uprising A political cartoon from the British magazine Punch from 1857
was not motivated by religious freedom, religion still showing the British perspective of the 1857 uprising with
mattered. One group of rebels put forth a proclamation “Britannia”—representing Great Britain—killing the natives,
in August of 1857 asking Hindus and Muslims to join justice as revenge! Public domain.
together. The plan was to overthrow the British and re-
instate Mughal imperial authority.

At the same time, the British failed to acknowledge the widespread economic problems caused by de-industrialization.
This was the process by which, under British rule, India began to produce less and have fewer jobs in manufacturing,
while at the same time Britain was industrializing rapidly. This lack of jobs led to great suffering across the region.

In addition, British responses to the uprising were often racist, characterizing Indian troops as inferior and violent.
British accounts from the period tended to paint Hindus and Muslims as religious fanatics, and also regarded
Indian violence as a primitive impulse, rather than a response to oppression. British sources—both then and now—
often refer to the 1857 events as The Sepoy Mutiny. They focus primarily on the discontent of sepoys in the East
India Company army and their rebellion against their commanding officers. While these explanations usually do
acknowledge that some peasants and landlords supported the rebel troops, they generally frame these events as a
military matter that impacted a few others.

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Whitney Howarth

Outcomes and Legacies

Although the East India Company lost its authority in India and was later dissolved, the racial abuses and economic
hardships that Indians experienced did not improve. Britain would continue its rule, but no longer through the EIC.
Queen Victoria issued a proclamation to the peoples and princes of India in 1858 promising no further interference
in religious traditions or matters relating to succession. Nevertheless, the British continued to distrust native
peoples, especially Muslims, whom they blamed for the rebellion. This led the new governing authorities to create
policies that insured inequality and supported racist justifications for colonial rule, or more accurately, misrule.

Communities who had remained loyal in 1857 were labeled “martial races” by the British government and recruited
heavily for the Indian Army. Yet they were not given much independence in the ranks, and were always under the
authority of a larger number of British officers. Most Indians were kept from advancing into higher posts within the
military and civilian services. The British created a new system of urban planning that focused on the segregation
of whites from native people. The bureaucracy of the state was expanded with new government offices and more
policing, surveillance, and regulation of native peoples. In the years to come, Western-educated native elites would
struggle for recognition and representation within the military and civil service. The British were hesitant to give
representation or autonomy to people they deemed “savage” at worst, and at best “unworthy” of self-governance.

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Whitney Howarth

Whitney Howarth
Whitney Howarth, is an Associate Professor of History at Plymouth State University where she specializes in modern world
history and the history of India. Dr. Howarth has taught world history at the college level since 1999 and was, for nearly a
decade, a research fellow at Northeastern’s World History Center, where she assisted in the research, design and creation of
professional development programs for high school world history teachers, hosted seminars by top world historical scholars,
and produced multi-media publications (1995-2004).

Image credits
Cover: Blowing from guns in British India, c. 1890. Private Collection. Artist : Vereshchagin, Vasili Vasilyevich (1842-1904). ©
Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
English engraving from 1857 showing mutinous sepoys dividing up spoils. Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Sepoy_Mutiny_1857.png#/media/File:Sepoy_Mutiny_1857.png
A political cartoon from the British magazine Punch from 1857 showing the British perspective of the 1857 uprising with
“Britannia”—representing Great Britain—killing the natives, justice as revenge! Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Indian_Rebellion_of_1857#/media/File:JusticeTenniel1857Punch.jpg

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