The Cawnpore Well, Lucknow Residency, and Delhi Ridge were sacred places within the British imagination of India. Sanctified by the colonial administration in commemoration of victory over the 'Sepoy Mutiny' of 1857, they were read as emblems of empire which embodied the central tenets of sacrifice, fortitude, and military prowess that underpinned Britain's imperial project. Since independence, however, these sites have been rededicated in honour of the 'First War of Independence' and are thus sacred to the memory of those who revolted against colonial rule, rather than those who saved it. The 1857 Indian Uprising and the Politics of Commemoration tells the story of these and other commemorative landscapes and uses them as prisms through which to view over 150 years of Indian history. Based on extensive archival research from India and Britain, Sebastian Raj Pender traces the ways in which commemoration responded to the demands of successive historical moments by shaping the events of 1857 from the perspective of the present. By telling the history of India through the transformation of mnemonic space, this study shows that remembering the past is always a political act.

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... aside with fierce and feverish haste by the defenders, and the two leaders of the relieving force stood at last within the Residency. Their work was not over. Many a weary week had still to be lived through, but there within the shattered line of defences we may for the time leave them, relieving and relieved alike. The future seemed for the moment assured, and the Union Jack fluttered out gaily in the wind upon the staff" which from that day to this, day in and day out, night in and night out, has borne our colours over Lucknow. Alone among the banners of England all the world over, that upon the battered Residency of Lucknow is never lowered at sunset. There are few other places which would seek such an honour at such a cost; but with the relief of Lucknow ended the real hazard of our Indian Empire, and though many a weary month had still to spend itself in the story of the mutiny, the news of the relief was rightly hailed in England as news almost of the relief of India. chapter viii. the second relief of lucknow. but Havelock and Outram found in the moment of success that they had rather reinforced than relieved the garrison. They had, of course, a wholly different task from that which had confronted Inglis. Without much difficulty the ground between the Residency and the coiling Gumti was secured by the garrison, and the repeated sorties of the defenders succeeded in clearing the houses actually overlooking the ramparts, those very houses from which they had suffered so cruelly for the three interminable months during which the Residency had awaited the coming of Havelock. But it was soon clear that this added strength had not made the evacuation of the Residency any more possible than before. The rebels in Lucknow itself numbered...

Situating the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context, Jill C. Bender traces its ramifications across the four different colonial sites of Ireland, New Zealand, Jamaica, and southern Africa. Bender argues that the 1857 uprising shaped colonial Britons' perceptions of their own empire, revealing the possibilities of an integrated empire that could provide the resources to generate and 'justify' British power. In response to the uprising, Britons throughout the Empire debated colonial responsibility, methods of counter-insurrection, military recruiting practices, and colonial governance. Even after the rebellion had been suppressed, the violence of 1857 continued to have a lasting effect. The fears generated by the uprising transformed how the British understood their relationship with the 'colonized' and shaped their own expectations of themselves as 'colonizer'. Placing the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context reminds us that British power was neither natural nor inevitable, but had to be constructed.

This collection of essays brings together two major new developments in cultural memory studies: firstly, the shift away from static models of cultural memory, where the emphasis lies on cultural products, in the direction of more dynamic models where the emphasis lies instead on the cultural and social processes involved in the ongoing production of shared views of the past; and secondly, the growing interest in the role of the media, and their role beyond that of mere storage, within these dynamics. The specific concern of this collection is linking the use of media to the larger socio-cultural processes involved in collective memory-making. The focus rests in particular on two aspects of media use: the basic dynamics of “mediation” and “remediation”. The key questions are: What role do media play in the production and circulation of cultural memories? How do mediation, remediation and intermediality shape objects and acts of cultural remembrance? How can new, emergent media redefine or transform what is collectively remembered? The essays of this collection focus on social, historical, religious, and artistic media-memories. The authors analyze the memory-making impact of news media, the mediation and remediation of lieux de mémoire, the medial representation of colonial and postcolonial, of Holocaust and Second World War memories, and finally the problematization of these very processes in artistic media forms, such as novels and movies.