The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India was much more than a ‘sepoy mutiny’. It was a major event in South Asian and British colonial history that significantly challenged imperialism in India. This fascinating collection explores hitherto ignored diversities of the Great Rebellion such as gender and colonial fiction, courtesans, white ‘marginals’, penal laws and colonial anxieties about the Mughals, even in exile. Also studied are popular struggles involving tribals and outcastes, and the way outcastes in the south of India locate the Rebellion. Interdisciplinary in focus and based on a range of untapped source materials and rare, printed tracts, this book questions conventional wisdom. The comprehensive introduction traces the different historiographical approaches to the Great Rebellion, including the imperialist, nationalist, marxist and subaltern scholarship. While questioning typical assumptions associated with the Great Rebellion, it argues that the Rebellion neither began nor ended in 1857-58. Clearly informed by the ‘Subaltern Studies’ scholarship, this book is post-subalternist as it moves far beyond narrow subalternist concerns. It will be of interest to students of Colonial and South Asian History, Social History, Cultural and Political Studies.

In spite of our technology, each day our problems seem to become more complex. Suffering still dominates the daily news, and it wearies the heart and mind. Humanity longs for change, for practical solutions. Society is but an extension of the individual. If we long to change the world, we must begin by changing ourselves. In order to free ourselves from the chains that bind us to suffering and spiritual darkness, we must first learn how and why we are chained. Those who are brave enough to face the dire reality of these moments require methods that result in personal change, psychological insight, and internal revolution. Free of the dogma of religion and the jargon of modern psychology, The Great Rebellion provides spiritual and psychological tools for the regeneration of the human being and society. Through the effort of the individual to redeem himself from the ties that bind his mind, the whole world can be saved from an unthinkable end.

A concise history of an uprising that took down a three-hundred-year-old dynasty and united the great powers. The year is 1900, and Western empires are locked in entanglements across the globe. The British are losing a bitter war against the Boers while the German kaiser is busy building a vast new navy. The United States is struggling to put down an insurgency in the South Pacific while the upstart imperialist Japan begins to make clear to neighboring Russia its territorial ambition. In China, a perennial pawn in the Great Game, a mysterious group of superstitious peasants is launching attacks on the Western powers they fear are corrupting their country. These ordinary Chinese—called Boxers by the West because of their martial arts showmanship—rise up seemingly out of nowhere. Foreshadowing the insurgencies of our recent past, they lack a centralized leadership and instead tap into latent nationalism and deep economic frustration to build their army. Many scholars brush off the Boxer Rebellion as an ill-conceived and easily defeated revolt, but in The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China, the military historian David J. Silbey shows just how close the Boxers came to beating back the combined might of the imperial powers. Drawing on the diaries and letters of allied soldiers and diplomats, he paints a vivid portrait of the war. Although their cause ended just as quickly as it began, the Boxers would inspire Chinese nationalists—including a young Mao Zedong—for decades to come.

What if George Washington's crossing of the Delaware had led to a catastrophic defeat and the collapse of the American Revolution? This is William Watson's world. As a thirteen-year-old boy from a farm in Graves End near New York City, he is swept up in what he knows as the Great Rebellion - a war that takes the lives of both his parents. He joins the rebel army just before its defeat at the Battle of Brooklyn, and shares its suffering as it retreats across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. He is at Washington's side at the Battle of Trenton, the rebel's final defeat and surrender. Escaping from Hessian captivity, William survives to face the challenges of growing up in British North America. He falls in love, learns a trade, and matures into manhood. He endures another war and overcomes the hardships and dangers of life on the North Carolina frontier. Now eighty years old, William tells his life story, but he is careful not to excuse his sometimes less than admirable behavior. He makes mistakes, suffers their consequences, and is willing to tell the reader about them. Do the British treat the defeated Americans harshly, as they did the Scots and Irish who rebelled during the 18th century, or do they take a gentler approach? The Great Rebellion offers an answer to that question that may surprise you. And what about the rest of the world? Does the failure of the American Revolution stop the French Revolution from occurring or are the grievances that led the long-suffering French to overthrow their King so strong that their rebellion occurred anyway? Again, the answer may surprise you.