In 1963, a human skull was discovered in a pub in Kent in south-east England. A brief handwritten note stuck inside the cavity revealed it to be that of Alum Bheg, an Indian soldier in British service who was executed during the aftermath of the 1857 Uprising, or The Indian Mutiny as historians of an earlier era described it. Alum Bheg was blown from a cannon for having allegedly murdered British civilians, and his head was brought back as a grisly war-trophy by an Irish officer present at his execution. The skull is a troublesome relic of both anti- colonial violence and the brutality and spectacle of British retribution. Kim Wagner presents an intimate and vivid account of life and death in British India in the throes of the largest rebellion of the nineteenth century. Fugitive rebels spent months, even years, hiding in the vastness of the Himalayas before they were eventually hunted down and punished by a vengeful colonial state. Examining the colonial practice of collecting and exhibiting human remains, this book offers a critical assessment of British imperialism that speaks to contemporary debates about the legacies of Empire and the myth of the 'Mutiny'.

In 1857 the Indian troops of the Bengal Army rose against their colonial masters. They were quickly joined by tens of thousands of discontented civilians in what was to become the bloodiest insurrection in the history of the British Empire. For much of the last century, Indian and British scholars downplayed the importance of professional grievances in their accounts of why the military insurrection of 1857 took place. Most viewed the Bengal sepoys as uniformed peasants who were affected by the same social, economic and religious concerns as their civilian counterparts. They tended to identify the defence of caste and religion as the key to the military uprising, while regarding the latter as little more than a precursor to a general revolt. Yet this study's identification of professional concerns as the essential cause of the Indian Mutiny is very much in line with the recent historiography of military revolts. All armies have grievances relating to conditions of service, particularly pay, career prospects and relations with officers. What set a colonial force like the Bengal Army apart is that it was a volunteer mercenary force officered by men of a different race and religion. Its loyalty to its paymasters, therefore, was entirely dependent on the incentives for service outweighing the disincentives. David argues that by 1857 this was no longer the case: primarily because the number and seriousness of the sepoys grievances was increasing, while the Bengal Armys control over its soldiers was weakening.

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was the bloodiest insurrection in the history of the British Empire. It began with a large-scale uprising by native troops against their colonial masters, and soon developed into general rebellion as thousands of discontented civilians joined in. It is a tale of brutal murder and heroic resistance from which innocents on both sides could not escape. This work covers the story of the Mutiny. It challenges the accepted wisdom that a British victory was inevitable, showing just how close the mutineers came to dealing a fatal blow to the British Raj.

The establishment in British India produced an impressive number of scholars and scholarly amateurs who pursued historical and other studies and wrote books and articles of distinction. Mr Palmer has produced a work in this tradition. His subject is the outbreak of the Mutiny (as the Raj considered it) among the native regiments (as the Raj called them) at Meerut on the evening of Sunday 10 May 1857. Was the outbreak planned in advance or did it arise through chance circumstances on that fateful evening? How badly was the situation handled?

The Indian Uprising of 1857 had a profound impact on the colonial psyche, and its spectre haunted the British until the very last days of the Raj. For the past 150 years most aspects of the Uprising have been subjected to intense scrutiny by historians, yet the nature of the outbreak itself remains obscure. What was the extent of the conspiracies and plotting? How could rumours of contaminated ammunition spark a mutiny when not a single greased cartridge was ever distributed to the sepoys? Based on a careful, even-handed reassessment of the primary sources, The Great Fear of 1857 explores the existence of conspiracies during the early months of that year and presents a compelling and detailed narrative of the panics and rumours which moved Indians to take up arms. With its fresh and unsentimental approach, this book offers a radically new interpretation of one of the most controversial events in the history of British India.

Accessible and comprehensive account of the sensation novel of the nineteenth century.