09-14-2007, 05:30 AM
Counting the Cost of War
In times of warfare, acts of brutality are commonly committed on both sides and the 1857 uprising proved no exception. The British practice of executing rebel soldiers and officers by tying them to the mouths of cannons, so that the crowds of onlookers would be spattered with blood and the corpses dispersed over a wide area, was intended to shock. It was furthermore a deliberate offence, because blasting the body to pieces in this manner prevented either cremation or a proper burial. The British also carried out hundreds of arbitrary hangings in Northern India as the fighting progressed almost hand to hand through the villages, until they were finally retaken.
By his own account, Frederick Cooper, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, shot to death no less than 237 captured sepoys at the end of July 1857, a further forty-five suffocating in cells - in a grisly re-enactment of Zephaniah Holwell's âBlack Hole' - before he had a chance to execute them. On the Indian side, there was likewise a systematic use of violence, quite apart from incidents such as the massacre in Kanpur at Satichaura Ghat. During his march through central India, Tatya Tope, for his part, ordered that village officials who had collaborated and collected taxes for the British should have their ears and noses cut off as an example to others. In short, this was a time of bloody savagery on both sides because both were desperate to win, and believed violence to be the only language their enemy understood.
The Uprising was finally quashed when the Governor General and later the first Viceroy, George Canning, amidst howls of protest from the civilians of Calcutta (who petitioned for the removal of 'clemency Canning' as he was called) offered an amnesty to all who gave themselves up after the recapture of Lucknow. This proposal was then published in a General Proclamation made in the name of Queen Victoria in Allahabad on November 1 st 1858, which promised to ârespect the rights of Indian Princes as our own'. By promising the non-confiscation of their lands, Canning was able to persuade fourteen taluqdars in Awadh alone to immediately surrender. Despite summary executions continuing thereafter, the amnesty greatly helped in the pacification of the population, all effective opposition coming to an end with the arrest and execution of Tatya Tope early in 1859. The Emperor Bahadur Shah was tried for treason at the age of 83, by his concessionaries for trade and the holders of the Diwani of Bengal (the East India Company), and was sentenced to transportation. Carried through north India in a bullock cart on his way to Calcutta, he was then exiled to Rangoon where he died and was buried in an unmarked grave four years later in November 1862.
Despite all that has been written on the topic, 1857 will probably remain forever clouded by confusion precisely because it has been used as a political tool both by the British, to justify their actions and their continuing rule in India, despite their unpopularity, and also by the rulers of independent India, who sought to construct a nationalist historiography which down-played (amongst other things) the centrality of the Delhi court in the events of the insurrection. India as the nation, we know now, was created in the twentieth century, and it would be folly to attempt to trace its origins to the events of one hundred years before. Likewise it would be a mistake uncritically to accept colonial British explanations for the uprising.
The most serious consequence of the Uprising was the vacating of the throne in Delhi, which paved the way for the creation of a new British Imperium in India. At the same time, however, the Uprising helped create a mythology of resistance which became a powerful ideological weapon in the hands of later Nationalists during the freedom struggle of the 1930's and 1940's. This was perhaps to prove to be one of its more important legacies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF 1857
(Sources referred to in the text are highlighted in blue)
http://www.csas.ed.ac.uk/mutiny/history6.html
In times of warfare, acts of brutality are commonly committed on both sides and the 1857 uprising proved no exception. The British practice of executing rebel soldiers and officers by tying them to the mouths of cannons, so that the crowds of onlookers would be spattered with blood and the corpses dispersed over a wide area, was intended to shock. It was furthermore a deliberate offence, because blasting the body to pieces in this manner prevented either cremation or a proper burial. The British also carried out hundreds of arbitrary hangings in Northern India as the fighting progressed almost hand to hand through the villages, until they were finally retaken.
By his own account, Frederick Cooper, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, shot to death no less than 237 captured sepoys at the end of July 1857, a further forty-five suffocating in cells - in a grisly re-enactment of Zephaniah Holwell's âBlack Hole' - before he had a chance to execute them. On the Indian side, there was likewise a systematic use of violence, quite apart from incidents such as the massacre in Kanpur at Satichaura Ghat. During his march through central India, Tatya Tope, for his part, ordered that village officials who had collaborated and collected taxes for the British should have their ears and noses cut off as an example to others. In short, this was a time of bloody savagery on both sides because both were desperate to win, and believed violence to be the only language their enemy understood.
The Uprising was finally quashed when the Governor General and later the first Viceroy, George Canning, amidst howls of protest from the civilians of Calcutta (who petitioned for the removal of 'clemency Canning' as he was called) offered an amnesty to all who gave themselves up after the recapture of Lucknow. This proposal was then published in a General Proclamation made in the name of Queen Victoria in Allahabad on November 1 st 1858, which promised to ârespect the rights of Indian Princes as our own'. By promising the non-confiscation of their lands, Canning was able to persuade fourteen taluqdars in Awadh alone to immediately surrender. Despite summary executions continuing thereafter, the amnesty greatly helped in the pacification of the population, all effective opposition coming to an end with the arrest and execution of Tatya Tope early in 1859. The Emperor Bahadur Shah was tried for treason at the age of 83, by his concessionaries for trade and the holders of the Diwani of Bengal (the East India Company), and was sentenced to transportation. Carried through north India in a bullock cart on his way to Calcutta, he was then exiled to Rangoon where he died and was buried in an unmarked grave four years later in November 1862.
Despite all that has been written on the topic, 1857 will probably remain forever clouded by confusion precisely because it has been used as a political tool both by the British, to justify their actions and their continuing rule in India, despite their unpopularity, and also by the rulers of independent India, who sought to construct a nationalist historiography which down-played (amongst other things) the centrality of the Delhi court in the events of the insurrection. India as the nation, we know now, was created in the twentieth century, and it would be folly to attempt to trace its origins to the events of one hundred years before. Likewise it would be a mistake uncritically to accept colonial British explanations for the uprising.
The most serious consequence of the Uprising was the vacating of the throne in Delhi, which paved the way for the creation of a new British Imperium in India. At the same time, however, the Uprising helped create a mythology of resistance which became a powerful ideological weapon in the hands of later Nationalists during the freedom struggle of the 1930's and 1940's. This was perhaps to prove to be one of its more important legacies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF 1857
(Sources referred to in the text are highlighted in blue)
http://www.csas.ed.ac.uk/mutiny/history6.html