Download The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857: The History and Legacy of the Indian Rebellion Against the British East India Company AudioBook Free
The English East India Company offered as one of the key players in the forming of the English Empire. From its roots as a trading company attempting to maintain using its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish opponents to its tenure as the ruling expert of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company functions as a lens by which to explore the much bigger economic and cultural forces that shaped the forming of a global English Empire. As an exclusive company that became a non-state global vitality in its right, the East India Company also functions as a cautionary story all too highly relevant to the present day world's current political and economic situation. In Bengal, the spot where in fact the rebellion that could change British-Indian relationships permanently took place, the Company distributed power with a local nawab. THE BUSINESS was presented with increasing responsibility, including the power to collect fees, or Diwani, in 1773. Many have criticized this "dual expert" of both local Indian rulers and the guideline of Company officers as allowing for greater corruption and creating anger and resentment throughout Bengal. Though a defender of Britain's efforts to India's background and economy, Kartar Lalvani calling the Company's collection of the Diwani "short-sighted greed" and charges the business with a "horrendous blunder regarding the role of revenue collection." To the Indian people, the events of 1857 are known as the first War for Self-reliance. For the British, the time is referred to as a mutiny, an uprising, or a rebellion. It is ironic a similar story performed out slightly below 100 years previously, during the American Revolution, or as the People in the usa called it, the War for Independence. Regardless of the moniker, in 1857, one of the Indian armies, the Bengal, mutinied. In the most cursory histories of the period, the cause of the rebellion is merely cited as an oversight, an alteration in the kind of grease found in powder cartridges rumored to contain canine body fat. This revelation horrified both Hindus and Muslims. The British response, which either didn't recognize the need to treat the growing rumors or attemptedto push Muslim and Hindu troops to use the ammunition despite their objections, made things worse. Publisher John McLeod clarifies that although controversy over animal-greased rifle cartridges was the immediate cause of the conflict, economic, religious, and political resentment existed and have been worsening throughout 1856. He also argues that rather than the uprising being due to either one incident or one cause - such as concerns over tries at religious conversion by Christian officials, anger at the English in general, or disappointment over specific duty guidelines - the rebellion was fueled not only by people that have specific complaints from the British, but by those who searched for to end up on the right vision of background. McLeod argues that many Indians signed up with the rebellion only after the tide seemed to be turning in favor of Indian rebels: "In general, the deciding factor was whether or not such leaders believed that their passions and the ones of the folks under their command word would be best offered by ending British guideline." McLeod concludes that the foundation of the mutiny was eventually economic, observing that "the commercial and educated classes of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras possessed prospered under Company dominance, and kept back." Around 80,000 Indians and over 5,000 British were killed during the rebellion, often horrifically, so that as British historian Percival Griffiths said of the rebellion in retrospect, "It is useless to go common sense on these excesses on both edges. Cruelty begets cruelty, and after a certain level of hurting and horror justice and common sense cave in to the demand for vengeance."
