Imperial authority examined
In May 1857 soldiers of the Bengal army shot their British officers, and marched on Delhi. Their mutiny encouraged rebellion by considerable numbers of Indian civilians in a broad belt of northern and central India - roughly from Delhi in the west to Benares in the east. For some months the British presence in this area was reduced to beleaguered garrisons, until forces were able to launch offensives that had restored imperial authority by 1858.
Shock inevitably stimulated much self-examination...
British public opinion was profoundly shocked by the scale of the uprising and by the loss of life on both sides - involving the massacre by the rebels of captured Europeans, including women and children, and the indiscriminate killing of Indian soldiers and civilians by the avenging British armies. Shock inevitably stimulated much self-examination, out of which emerged an explanation of these terrible events; this explanation has exercised a powerful influence over opinion in Britain ever since.
Map of India showing the areas affected by rebellion in 1857 © Indians were assumed to have been a deeply conservative people whose traditions and ways of life had been disregarded by their British rulers. Reforms, new laws, new technology, even Christianity, had been forced upon them. They found these deeply offensive and were driven to resist them with violence.
TopA history in two halves
British soldiers racing to quash the Indian mutiny at Lucknow in 1857 © The lesson that the British drew from 1857 was that caution must prevail: Indian traditions must be respected and the assumed guardians of these traditions - priests, princes or landholders - were to be conciliated under firm authoritarian British rule.
Thus British Indian history in the 19th century is often divided into two halves, separated by the great watershed of 1857: an age of ill-considered reform, followed by an age of iron conservatism. Conservatism was eventually to provoke a different form of reaction, the nationalism out of which modern India was to be born.
...what the British intended and what they were able to achieve were often very different things.
There are, however, serious difficulties in any interpretation of 19th-century Indian history that divides it into an age of reform that gave way under the shock of rebellion to an age of conservatism. This may in a very rough sense reflect the intentions of India's British rulers, but what the British intended and what they were able to achieve were often very different things. Outcomes depended as much on the inclinations and efforts of Indian people as on the initiatives of their rulers.
TopBefore the rebellion
In the first half of the 19th century, when the East India Company still ruled India on Britain's behalf, there was a heady rhetoric of reform and improvement in some British circles. The aspiration of Thomas Macaulay - a member of the Company's ruling council in 1835, as well as a historian - to foster 'a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions in morals and in intellect' is often quoted. Less often quoted is his preceding sentence, in which he admitted that 'it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people'.
The means of the Company's government were indeed limited. The greater part of its resources went on its armed forces, not on schemes for improvement. An insecure government of necessity moved cautiously, in spite of its rhetoric, and at the time the Indian economy was generally stagnant.
The authority of Brahmins and of doctrines of caste separation grew stronger, not weaker.
European influences were strongest in the towns of India. This was especially true in the old bases of British trade, such as Calcutta, Madras or Bombay, where a new Indian intelligentsia had begun to take root. Whatever the British may have intended, their early rule seems generally to have consolidated the hold of what they regarded as 'traditional' intellectuals, rather than displacing them by new ones, and the authority of Brahmins and of doctrines of caste separation grew stronger, not weaker.
In the countryside the vital issues were the control of the land, the amount of tax the peasant farmers had to pay, and the opportunities they had to find outlets for their surplus crops. Early British occupation was disruptive: aristocracies lost power and influence to the new rulers, the conditions under which land was held could be changed, and taxation was more rigorously enforced. It took time for winners to emerge in this situation, people who had been able to extract gains from the new order, and who would compensate for those who had lost out.
In May 1857 soldiers of the Bengal army shot their British officers, and marched on Delhi. Their mutiny encouraged rebellion by considerable numbers of Indian civilians in a broad belt of northern and central India - roughly from Delhi in the west to Benares in the east. For some months the British presence in this area was reduced to beleaguered garrisons, until forces were able to launch offensives that had restored imperial authority by 1858.
Shock inevitably stimulated much self-examination...
British public opinion was profoundly shocked by the scale of the uprising and by the loss of life on both sides - involving the massacre by the rebels of captured Europeans, including women and children, and the indiscriminate killing of Indian soldiers and civilians by the avenging British armies. Shock inevitably stimulated much self-examination, out of which emerged an explanation of these terrible events; this explanation has exercised a powerful influence over opinion in Britain ever since.
Map of India showing the areas affected by rebellion in 1857 © Indians were assumed to have been a deeply conservative people whose traditions and ways of life had been disregarded by their British rulers. Reforms, new laws, new technology, even Christianity, had been forced upon them. They found these deeply offensive and were driven to resist them with violence.
TopA history in two halves
British soldiers racing to quash the Indian mutiny at Lucknow in 1857 © The lesson that the British drew from 1857 was that caution must prevail: Indian traditions must be respected and the assumed guardians of these traditions - priests, princes or landholders - were to be conciliated under firm authoritarian British rule.
Thus British Indian history in the 19th century is often divided into two halves, separated by the great watershed of 1857: an age of ill-considered reform, followed by an age of iron conservatism. Conservatism was eventually to provoke a different form of reaction, the nationalism out of which modern India was to be born.
...what the British intended and what they were able to achieve were often very different things.
There are, however, serious difficulties in any interpretation of 19th-century Indian history that divides it into an age of reform that gave way under the shock of rebellion to an age of conservatism. This may in a very rough sense reflect the intentions of India's British rulers, but what the British intended and what they were able to achieve were often very different things. Outcomes depended as much on the inclinations and efforts of Indian people as on the initiatives of their rulers.
TopBefore the rebellion
In the first half of the 19th century, when the East India Company still ruled India on Britain's behalf, there was a heady rhetoric of reform and improvement in some British circles. The aspiration of Thomas Macaulay - a member of the Company's ruling council in 1835, as well as a historian - to foster 'a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions in morals and in intellect' is often quoted. Less often quoted is his preceding sentence, in which he admitted that 'it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people'.
The means of the Company's government were indeed limited. The greater part of its resources went on its armed forces, not on schemes for improvement. An insecure government of necessity moved cautiously, in spite of its rhetoric, and at the time the Indian economy was generally stagnant.
The authority of Brahmins and of doctrines of caste separation grew stronger, not weaker.
European influences were strongest in the towns of India. This was especially true in the old bases of British trade, such as Calcutta, Madras or Bombay, where a new Indian intelligentsia had begun to take root. Whatever the British may have intended, their early rule seems generally to have consolidated the hold of what they regarded as 'traditional' intellectuals, rather than displacing them by new ones, and the authority of Brahmins and of doctrines of caste separation grew stronger, not weaker.
In the countryside the vital issues were the control of the land, the amount of tax the peasant farmers had to pay, and the opportunities they had to find outlets for their surplus crops. Early British occupation was disruptive: aristocracies lost power and influence to the new rulers, the conditions under which land was held could be changed, and taxation was more rigorously enforced. It took time for winners to emerge in this situation, people who had been able to extract gains from the new order, and who would compensate for those who had lost out.