Pandey rebelled by shooting a British sergeant-major and a lieutenant. The immediate cause of the Revolt was the issue of the greased cartridges. The Greased Cartridge: The Heroes and Villains of 1857-58, Rezensionen werden nicht berprft, Google sucht jedoch gezielt nach geflschten Inhalten und entfernt diese. Western inventions such as the telegraph and railways aroused the prejudice of a conservative society (though Indians crowded the trains when they had them). This included an increase in the taxation on land. This event and Pandey's subsequent punishment led to more resentment among the sepoys of the Bengal Army ultimately aiding in the Revolt of 1857.. The surrender of Kanpur, after a relatively brief siege, was followed by a massacre of virtually all British citizens and loyal Indian soldiers at Kanpur. India at the time of the 1857 rebellion. Though the revolt failed in its objective, even in failure it served a grand purpose. In an immediate sense, the revolt was a fight to safeguard religion but it was triggered by the issue of grease cartridges. It came as a greater shock than the loss of the American colonies, and prompted reprisals far more hysterical and vicious than those visited on rebellious subjects elsewhere in the Empire. Certain actions of the government, such as increased recruitment of Sikhs and Gurkhas, peoples considered by the Bengal sepoys to be inferior in caste to them, increased the distrust of the sepoys who thought that this was a sign of their services not being needed any more. It began on a point of caste pollution; its leaders were traditionalists who looked to reviving the past, while the small new Westernized class actively supported the British. The company had an unbroken series of victories in India, against the Marathas, Mysore, north Indian states, and the Gurkhas, later against the Sikhs, and further afield in China and Burma. A. Some people said that it was a propitiatory observance to avert some impending calamity; others, that they were circulated by the Government to signify that the population throughout the country would be compelled to use the same food as the Christians, and thus be deprived of their religion; while others again said that the chupatties were circulated to make it known that Government was determined to force Christianity on the country by interfering with their food, and intimation of it was thus given that they might be prepared to resist the attempt. It was a source of inspiration for the national liberation movement, which later achieved what the revolt could not. The Revolt of 1857, an anti-colonial movement which fought against the imperialist policies of the British East India Company, is an important event that took place in Indian history. Feature Flags: { [19] Thus, the Hindu soldiers viewed the Act as a potential threat to their faith. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. The greased cartridges had to be opened by biting off the top with your teeth. Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. Increasing numbers of Christian missionaries began arriving in India, and their presence gave credence to rumors of impending conversions. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, sepoys tended to take great pride in their military prowess, and they exhibited enormous loyalty to their British officers. Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. Proceedings of the Trial of Badahur Shah. In Accounts and Papers, East Indies, Session 3 February-19 April 1859, Parliamentary Papers XVIII of 1859;William Wotherspoon Ireland. Click to view in higher resolution. He survived and was put on trial and hanged on April 8, 1857. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. It was alluded to , and it was supposed to portend some coming disturbance, and was, moreover, understood as implying an invitation to the whole population of the country to unite for some secret objective afterwards to be disclosed. When Muslim and Hindu troops learned that the tip of the Enfield cartridge had to be bitten off to prepare it for firing, a number of troops refused, for religious reasons, to accept the ammunition. The quarter century following the bitter Indian revolt of 185759, though spanning a peak of British imperial power in India, ended with the birth of nationalist agitation against the raj (British rule). The transfer of the number 66th which was taken away from a regular Bengal Sepoy regiment of the line disbanded over refusal to serve without batta, and given to a Gurkha battalion, was considered by the Sepoy as a breach of faith by the company. The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994);Mark Thornhill. The revolt of 1857, which the British call the Indian Mutiny but many Indians prefer to think of as the First War of Independence, was the defining event in British imperial history. From the confidential physician to the King of Delhi: Nobody can tell what was the object of the distribution of the chupatties. Outraged by events such as the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore, some British officers believed that hanging mutineers was too humane. Ferocity led to grave excesses on both sides, distinguishing this war in horror from other wars of the 19th century. Government was ostentatiously neutral, but Hindu society was inclined to regard the missionaries as eroding Hindu society without openly interfering. Both Hindu and Muslim sepoys refused to use them. In England, almost every child is aware that, with a smooth bored gun, no grease of any kind is required to ensure the proper loading of it, whilst with a rifle-bored piece such is necessary. So writes Mrs Peile, one of those who escaped from Delhi on 11 May 1857. This took the form of Muslim millenarianism, with preachers in Lucknow foretelling the end of the raj. Lands were confiscated from the landlords and auctioned. The powder and bullet for the new rifle were put together in a paper cartridge. Privacy Statement The new Enfield rifles, which were now being issued, had grooved or rifled barrels. Seven Years' War: Major General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, Biography of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, 20 Facts About the Life of Mahatma Gandhi, independence movement against British rule. Q. In the illustration, a mutineer was depicted chained to the front of a British cannon, awaiting his imminent execution, as others were gathered to watch the grisly spectacle. The revolt was sparked by a number of reasons, including economic exploitation, cultural repression, and mistreatment of Indian soldiers. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. Sympathetic rulers, such as Lord William Bentinck were replaced by arrogant aristocrats, such as Lord Dalhousie, who despised the troops and the populace. Most worryingly of all, some very similar rumors had once been recorded far to the south, in the Madras Presidency in 1806, at the time of a serious outbreak of mutiny among Indian soldiers stationed at Vellore. What was the issue of cartridges? [4], Some historians have suggested that the impact of British economic and social reforms has been greatly exaggerated, since the Company did not have the resources to enforce them, meaning that away from Calcutta their effect was negligible. In fact, it was rather the last effort of traditional India. For both Indians and British, the period was haunted with dark memories of the mutiny, and numerous measures were taken by the British raj to avoid another conflict. This meant that when they came to be threatened by modernizing regimes in Calcutta, from the 1840s onwards, the sepoys had become accustomed to very high ritual status, and were extremely sensitive to suggestions that their caste might be polluted. In 1824, there was another mutiny by a regiment ordered overseas in the First Anglo-Burmese War, who were refused transport to carry individual cooking vessels and told to share communal pots. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Richard Barter. The Revolt of 1857 eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. Books and articles about the bloody fighting and heroic deeds by British officers and men were published for decades in London. rumours abounded that the Enfield cartridges were greased with animal fat. The officers continued to be British, but they were more closely linked with their men. [15], The varying stances of the British government, the reduction of allowances, and harsh punishments, contributed to a feeling amongst the troops that the Company no longer cared for them. Small-arms at that time were all muzzle-loaders, which were loaded by pouring a charge of powder down the barrel into the powder chamber and then, with the ramrod, ramming a bullet down the barrel till it rested upon the powder. British and Indian military drills of the time required soldiers to bite off the end of the Beeswax paper cartridge, pour the gunpowder contained within down the barrel, stuff the remaining paper cartridge into the barrel, ram the paper cartridge (which included the ball wrapped and tied in place) down the barrel, remove the ram-rod, return the ram-rod, bring the rifle to the ready, set the sights, add a percussion cap, present the rifle, and fire. Dalhousie had also appointed Inam Commission with powers to confiscate land. Under a British policy called the "doctrine of lapse," the East India Company would take control of Indian states in which a local ruler had died without an heir. The irony is that all this effort actually supplied historians with evidence that the chupatty movement had nothing at all to do with the outbreak of disorder some months laterand that the circulation of the breads early in 1857 was nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. It was generally believed, in retrospect, that the circulation of the breads had been a warning of trouble ahead, and that the wave of chapatis must have been set in motion by a cunning group of determined conspirators who had begun plotting the rising months, if not years, in advance. What are the oldest known civilizations of India? Following the disarming and disbandment of an additional seventeen Bengal Native Infantry regiments, which were suspected of planning mutiny, only twelve survived to serve in the new post-mutiny army. As mutineers were captured, they were often killed on the spot, and many were executed in dramatic fashion. B. The resumption of tax-free land and confiscation of jagirs (the grant or right to locally control land revenue) caused discontent among the jagirdars and zamindars. Thereafter he headed the National Mineral Water Company in Muscat, Oman. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. British officials were alarmed at the rapid distribution of mysterious Indian breads across much of the Raj, There is a most mysterious affair going on throughout the whole of India at present, Dr. Gilbert Hadow wrote in a letter to his sister in Britain in March 1857. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. Many sepoys believed that the victory was the destruction of cartridges that were standard issue with the new rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims and tallow (cow fat) which angered the Hindus as cows were equal to a goddess to them. 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