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The struggle for sucession: rebels and loyalists in the Indian mutiny of 1857

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

E. I. Brodkin
E. I. Brodkin
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Extract

In the summer of 1857 British power throughout much of northern India was suddenly and violently subverted. Yet in spite of the fact that the uprising has perhaps commanded more attention than any other single event in Indian history the debate over its nature and causes still rages and 1857 remains a sensitive and highly controversial issue.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , May 1972 , pp. 277 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

E. I. Brodkin is Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College. The research for this article was supported by the Smuts Memorial Fund of Cambridge University.

1 Majumdar, R. C., The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857 (Calcutta: Mukhopadhyay, 1963), p. 185.Google Scholar

2 The Nawab's sentence was later commuted. He was sent to Aden and there left to his own devices.

3 Tafazzul Husain Khan, the Nawab of Farrukhabad, to Khan, Yusaf Ali, the Nawab of Rampur, 9 10 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 165, Serial No. 2, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad. The dates of all documents translated from the Persian have been converted according to Haig, W., Comparative Tables of Muhammadan and Christian Dates (London: Luzac, 1932).Google Scholar

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 This, of course, applies only in the earlier stages of the rebellion when it was a great deal less than certain that the British would be returning.

7 See Sen, S. N., Eighteen Fifty-Seven (Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1957), pp. 350 ff.Google Scholar

8 Shakespear, A. to Alexander, R., n.d., Narrative of Events Attending the Outbreak of Disturbances and the Restoration of Authority in the District of Bijnour in 1857–58, pp. 509–10.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., pp. 511–12.

10 Muir, W. to Alexander, R., 7 07 1858Google Scholar, Commissioner's Office Rohilkhand, Dept XXIV, File 1/46, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

11 Shakespear, A. to Alexander, R., 4 08 1858Google Scholar, Commissioner's Office Rohilkhand, Dept IVA, File 2/73, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

12 Ibid.

13 Shakespear, A. to Alexander, R., 9 06 1858Google Scholar, Ibid.

14 Memorandum of Captain Drummond, 21 09 1858Google Scholar, Commissioner's Office Rohilkhand, Dept IVA, File 2/73, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

15 Robertson, Major to the Editor of the Friend of India, 22 07 1858Google Scholar, Ibid.

16 Shakespear, A. to the Editor of the Friend of India, 29 07 1858Google Scholar, Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Shakespear, A. to Alexander, R., 4 08 1858Google Scholar, Ibid. The number of elephants provided by Mahmud Khan for Shakespear's departure was, in this letter, reduced to one.

19 Memorandum of Captain Drummond, 21 09 1858Google Scholar, Ibid.

20 Memorandum of Colonel Baird Smith, 11 08 1858Google Scholar, Ibid.

21 Major Robertson to W. Muir, n.d., Commissioner's Office Rohilkhand, Dept IV A, File 2/73, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

22 Couper, George to Roberts, W., Officiating Commissioner of Rohilkhand, 1 05 1861Google Scholar, Ibid.

23 Couper, George to Inglis, John, 6 08 1862Google Scholar, Ibid.

24 R. Robertson to W. Muir, n.d., Ibid.

25 Maclagan, Captain to Muir, W., 24 09 1858Google Scholar, Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Memorandum of Captain Drummond, 21 09 1858Google Scholar, Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Khan, Mahmud to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 2 07 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 156, Serial No. I, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

30 Khan, Yusaf Ali to Khan, Mahmud, 10 07 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 156, Serial No. 2, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

31 Khan, Mahmud to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 2 08 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 158, Serial No. 2, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

32 Ibid.

33 Khan, Mahmud to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 8 08 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 159, Serial No. 8, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

34 Alexander, R. to Muir, W. 6 10 1857Google Scholar, Muir, W., Records of the Intelligence Department of the Government of the North-West Provinces of India during the Mutiny of 1857, ed. Coldstream, W. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1902), Vol. I, p. 213.Google Scholar

35 Ibid.

36 To Mahmud Khan this constituted ‘harassing the public’. See Khan, Mahmud to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 2 07 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 156, Serial No. 1, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

37 See Singh, Sheoraj to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 23 08 1858Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 10, File No. 525, Serial No. 6, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

38 Ibid.

39 Alexander, R. to Muir, W., 6 12 1858Google Scholar, Board of Revenue, Moradabad File 22, Acc. No. 548, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

40 See, for example, Khan, Mahmud to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 2 07 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 156, Serial No. 1, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

41 Wilson, J. C. to Thornhill, C., 11 08 1857, Records of the Intelligence Department…, Vol. II, p. 303.Google Scholar

42 Wilson, J. C. to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 4 01 1858Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 171, Serial No. 2, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad. Wilson had been extremely agitated for some time over the fact that since the outbreak of hostilities his salary had not been paid. Robert Alexander had decided that it was ‘neither necessary nor expedient’ to pay it ‘at the present time, the less so as… Mr. Wilson is an English gentleman who is as much aware of the honour and solvency of the British Government as of the peculiar nature of the present crisis and of the propriety of requiring private claims for the present at least to yield to public’. Alexander, R. to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 8 08 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No.8, File No. 327, Serial No. 2. This did not satisfy Wilson. ‘All the employees of the civil court of the district of Moradabad’, he complained to the Nawab of Rampur, ‘are regularly being paid their salaries by you and I think this is being done without the permission of the Commissioner Sahib. I compared my case with that of a Translator of the Civil Court and came to the conclusion that if a Translator, who has no work to do for the present, can get his salary, the judge must also get his salary, especially since the Translator has no work to do and the Judge has so much work to do that he can have no rest day and night…. It does not stand to reason that the Translator with no work should get his salary and the Judge who spends days and nights in strenuous labour for Government should be paid nothing. But it has now been revealed to me that this idea of mine is based on a misconception. I have come to remember a saying… “Patience holds the key to the door of the Treasury.”’ Wilson, J. C. to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 22 09 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 8, File No. 327, Serial No. 3.

43 Khan, Mahmud to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 19 12 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 170, Serial No. 4, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

44 Khan, Yusaf Ali to Khan, Mahmud, 23 12 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 170, Serial No. 5, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

45 Williams, F. to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 17 12 1857Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 4, File No. 170, Serial No. 6, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

46 Khan, Khan Bahadur to Khan, Yusaf Ali, 7 01 1858Google Scholar, Rampur Mutiny Records, Bundle No. 5, File No. 204, Serial No. 9, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.

47 The Special Commission was headed by John Strachey whose antipathy towards Pathans is well documented in his work, Hastings and the Rohilla War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892).Google Scholar

48 Muir, W. to Alexander, R., 27 10 1858Google Scholar, Commissioner's Office Rohilkhand, Dept. IVA, File 2/73, State Archives of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad.