"Frey's concise and readable history of the Indian Rebellion is an excellent introduction to one of the most important wars of the nineteenth century. The rebellion lasted more than a year and pitted broad sections of north Indian society against the British East India Company. British victory consolidated colonial rule that would only be dislodged by twentieth-century nationalist movements. Frey provides a crystal-clear account of the causes, principal events, and consequences of the rebellion. Equally importantly, he deftly discusses why the rebellion remains controversial. Well-chosen documents add texture to the analysis. This is the best short history of the rebellion in print." —Ian Barrow, Middlebury College

EIGHTEEN FIFTY-SEVEN was an epic confrontation of race and politics between the colonial new western secular-positivism now in alliance with western Christianity, and the indigenous new, the forces of peasant-aristocratic Asian capitalism and modernity. Till today it remains the only event, which gives a glimpse of lost possibilities of a non-Western, free, unfettered Asiatic personality and development. It outlines in detail the machinations and mindset of liberal western Imperialism, so easily lured into secular Imperialism and then into religious fundamentalism, its promise of liberty turning into a nightmare of oppression and cruelty. Accessible to scholars, historians, lay readers, students of military adventure and battles, ideologies, action and drama, the story of 1857 story resonates with smells and sounds of an Indian caravanserai and chandukhana, the auburn-gray picture of high sounding, sex starved Victorian England. It offers for the first time an East-West conflict with equal footage offered to both sides seen from a contemporary perspective Asian and Western, indigenous and modern revolving around the heterogeneous needs and aspirations of the present, strife ridden age. T The book in two volumes, showcases a West, the West has never seen, an Asia which Asians are unaware of and a story of `The Indian Mutiny which has never been told before. The whole Asia-Europe conflict gets a new slant. In the current world, political climate of East-West polarization, this book is bound to do well both in India, Asia and the West.

The East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 explores how empire in Asia shaped British country houses, their interiors and the lives of their residents. It includes chapters from researchers based in a wide range of settings such as archives and libraries, museums, heritage organisations, the community of family historians and universities. It moves beyond conventional academic narratives and makes an important contribution to ongoing debates around how empire impacted Britain. The volume focuses on the propertied families of the East India Company at the height of Company rule. From the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to the outbreak of the Indian Uprising in 1857, objects, people and wealth flowed to Britain from Asia. As men in Company service increasingly shifted their activities from trade to military expansion and political administration, a new population of civil servants, army officers, surveyors and surgeons journeyed to India to make their fortunes. These Company men and their families acquired wealth, tastes and identities in India, which travelled home with them to Britain. Their stories, the biographies of their Indian possessions and the narratives of the stately homes in Britain that came to house them, frame our explorations of imperial culture and its British legacies.

An innovative study using the commemoration of 1857 as a prism through which to explore 150 years of Indian history.

This book documents representations of the Revolt of 1857 in India in non-English speaking Europe. It casts light on the impact of the Revolt elsewhere -- its international dimension -- examining its probable influence on simultaneous articulations of nationalist identities in central, south and eastern Europe.