In the late 1700s and early 1800s, sepoys tended to take great pride in their military prowess, and they exhibited enormous loyalty to their British officers. Immediate Cause The Revolt of 1857 eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. It was a source of inspiration for the national liberation movement, which later achieved what the revolt could not. Then the bullet had to be rammed down the rifled barrel. In India, it has been viewed quite differently. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. A rumor spread that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Narasimha Rao, The BJP becomes the largest party in the Lok Sabha, BJP reelection bids and tensions in Kashmir, Addressing COVID-19 and its economic impact. The grease used was tallow, probably containing both cow and pig fat. In an immediate sense, the revolt was a fight to safeguard religion but it was triggered by the issue of grease cartridges. The events of 1857 have been considered the first outbreak of an independence movement against British rule. From Delhi the revolt spread in June to Kanpur (Cawnpore) and Lucknow. [14], The pay of the sepoy was relatively low and after Awadh and the Punjab were annexed, the soldiers no longer received extra pay (batta or bhatta) if posted there, because this was no longer considered "foreign service". Coconuts had passed at great speed from village to village in central India in 1818, at a time when the mofussil was being ravaged by large bands of merciless looters known as the Pindaris. In spite of their apparently desperate situation, the British possessed long-term advantages: they could and did receive reinforcements from Britain; they had, thanks to the resolution of Sir John Lawrence, a firm base in the Punjab, and they had another base in Bengal, where the people were quiet; they had virtually no anxiety in the south and only a little in the west; and they had an immense belief in themselves and their civilization, which gave resolution to their initial desperation. Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. History of the Siege of Delhi (Edinburgh: A&C Black, 1861);John Kaye. of your Kindle email address below. Seven Years' War: Major General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, Biography of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, 20 Facts About the Life of Mahatma Gandhi, independence movement against British rule. Many sepoys believed that the victory was the destruction of cartridges that were standard issue with the new rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims and tallow (cow fat) which angered the Hindus as cows were equal to a goddess to them. ThoughtCo, Jul. A chowkidaran Indian village watchman. Richard Barter. To facilitate its passage, the cartridges were greased with tallow, which, in the U.K., was made of beef and pork fat. But something important was required to provoke so many to seize the opportunity of a military uprising to stage a war of independence. Pandey, it should be noted, is considered a hero in India, and has been portrayed as a freedom fighter in films and even on an Indian postage stamp. When Muslim and Hindu troops learned that the tip of the Enfield cartridge had to be bitten off to prepare it for firing, a number of troops refused, for religious reasons, to accept the ammunition. Furthermore, legal changes introduced by the British were accompanied by prohibitions on Indian religious customs and were seen as steps towards forced conversion to Christianity. And when the Indian independence movement gained momentum in the 20th century, events of the Revolt of 1857 were viewed as having been an early battle for independence, while individuals such as Mangal Pandey were hailed as early national heroes. Western inventions such as the telegraph and railways aroused the prejudice of a conservative society (though Indians crowded the trains when they had them). Map: Wikicommons. The revolt of 1857 was one of the greatest & most significant developments in the history of the 19th century. The movement that Hadow was describing was a remarkable example of rumor gone wild. There at a stroke was an army, a cause, and a national leaderthe only Muslim who appealed to both Hindus and Muslims. One of the first officials to encounter it was Mark Thornhill, magistrate in the little Indian town of Mathura, near Agra. Company officers became aware of the rumours through reports of an altercation between a high-caste sepoy and a low-caste labourer at Dum Dum. 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It is however also possible to enclose within the paper container the bullet as well as the powder and the cartridge then becomes a balled cartridge. Increasing numbers of Christian missionaries began arriving in India, and their presence gave credence to rumors of impending conversions. But the wars against the Afghans and the Sikhs and then the annexations of Dalhousie alarmed and outraged them. Its cartridges consisted of a .577 inch ball projectile and a charge of gun powder propellant wrapped in waterproofed cartridge paper. Few of these participated in the rebellion, and one contingent in particular (the recently raised Punjab Irregular Force) actively participated on the British side. 31, 2021, thoughtco.com/sepoy-mutiny-of-1857-1774014. Has data issue: true As mutineers were captured, they were often killed on the spot, and many were executed in dramatic fashion. On May 9, 1857, some 4,000 British soldiers and sepoysnative Indian troopsformed a three-sided hollow square on the parade ground at the Meerut military cantonment, 40 miles northeast of Delhi, to witness punishment. To "the cow reverencing Hindu and the pig paranoid Muslims" having to bite this was repellent, defiling and deadly to their religious prospects. Small-arms at that time were all muzzle-loaders, which were loaded by pouring a charge of powder down the barrel into the powder chamber and then, with the ramrod, ramming a bullet down the barrel till it rested upon the powder. Following the fighting of 185758, India was legally considered a colony of Britain, ruled by a viceroy. The traditional story of the Sepoy Mutiny is that the introduction of a new cartridge for the Enfield rifle provoked much of the trouble. The Revolt of 1857, also known as the First War of Indian Independence, was a significant uprising against British colonial rule in India. At other times however, the Company directly or indirectly conceded the legitimacy of the sepoy's demands, such as when troops of the Bengal and Madras armies refused to serve in Sindh without batta after its conquest. The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994);Mark Thornhill. Along with the previously mentioned illustration in Ballou's Pictorial, numerous American newspapers published accounts of the violence in India. To save content items to your account, But those who did would not have been surprised by what happened next, for some very similar beliefs were spreading in the early months of 1857. Total loading time: 0 Books and articles about the bloody fighting and heroic deeds by British officers and men were published for decades in London. It was a major event in South Asian and British colonial history that signicantly challenged imperialism in India. Stbere im grten eBookstore der Welt und lies noch heute im Web, auf deinem Tablet, Telefon oder E-Reader. Mangal Pandey was an Indian soldier who played an important role in incidents prior to the uprising of 1857, known by different names like the 'Indian Rebellion of 1857,' the 'Sepoy Mutiny' and 'India's First War of Independence.'. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. Most Indians thought they were the work of the British, whothrough the East India Companyhad ruled over large portions of the country for almost a century (and were, according to one well-known prophecy, due to be unseated at that centurys end). The grotesque executions by cannon became even became widely known in America. Feature Flags: { Whether the cartridge was unballed or balled, it was necessary, in loading a muzzle-loader, to open the end of the cartridge. Mike Dash rumours abounded that the Enfield cartridges were greased with animal fat. } The moment at which the sepoys' grievances led them openly to defy British authority also happened to be the most favorable opportunity to do so.[24]. It was no secret that the Companys armies had been making preparations for the introduction of a new sort of ammunition for a new model of Enfield rifle. Yet discreet inquiries soon revealed that many hundreds of chapatis were passing through his district, and through other parts of India as welleverywhere from the Narmada river in the south to the border with Nepal several hundred miles to the north. Wagner concludes that the trigger for the rebellion of 1857 was thus rumour, not the actual issue, or use, of cartridges greased with animal fat; that, in any case, we simply don't know what sort of tallow was used at Gangadarh Banerji & Co.; and that - remarkable as it now seems - the truth of the matter never was established, even by the The greased cartridge - what was it all about? Throughout May and June 1857 more units of Indian troops mutinied against the British. But the back of the rebellion had been broken and time gained for reinforcements to restore British superiority. Though the revolt was suppressed later, it shook the foundation of British rule in India. As John Kaye wrote a few years later: Among other wild fables, which took firm hold of the popular mind, was one to the effect that the Companys officers had collected all the newly-manufactured salt, had divided it into two great heaps, and over one had sprinkled the blood of hogs, and over the other the blood of cows; that they had then sent it to be sold throughout the country of the pollution and desecration of the Mahommedans and Hindoos, that all might be brought to one caste and to one religion like the English. Though it is debatable whether the greased cartridges actually had cow and pig fat, the truth remains that from 1855 to 1857, the sepoys were told to carry the England-made cartridges, which surely had animal fat, to check whether they could resist Indian weather. [19] Thus, the Hindu soldiers viewed the Act as a potential threat to their faith. Click to view in higher resolution. There is reason to believe that this was originated by some intriguers of the old Court of Lucknow. Victoria added the title "Empress of India" to her royal title. This made them more accurate and gave them a longer range. A rumour spread that the cartridges of the new enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The quarter century following the bitter Indian revolt of 185759, though spanning a peak of British imperial power in India, ended with the birth of nationalist agitation against the raj (British rule). It was alluded to , and it was supposed to portend some coming disturbance, and was, moreover, understood as implying an invitation to the whole population of the country to unite for some secret objective afterwards to be disclosed. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. There was thus a suppressed tension in the countryside, ready to break out whenever governmental pressure might be reduced. It was generally believed, in retrospect, that the circulation of the breads had been a warning of trouble ahead, and that the wave of chapatis must have been set in motion by a cunning group of determined conspirators who had begun plotting the rising months, if not years, in advance. Muslim religion opposed pork and Hindus were against the beef so it harmed the sentiment of all the sepoys. Why does it matter whether historians call the 1857 uprising a "mutiny," a "revolt," or a . He also resumed the practice of tax-free lands in some areas. Certain actions of the government, such as increased recruitment of Sikhs and Gurkhas, peoples considered by the Bengal sepoys to be inferior in caste to them, increased the distrust of the sepoys who thought that this was a sign of their services not being needed any more. A cartridge of this kind, containing powder and nothing more, is often specified as an unballed cartridge. In another, however, the appalling atrocities visited by the Companys armies on the people of northern India were far from justified, since the British proved to be just as prone to rumors and panics as their Indian subjects. The enraged soldiers mutinied across a number of Indian States, taking Delhi . The officers continued to be British, but they were more closely linked with their men. B. But the only evidence for either of these was the circulation from village to village of chapatis, or cakes of unleavened bread, a practice that, though it also occurred on other occasions, was known to have taken place at any time of unrest. The cartridge had to be bitten off before loading it into the gun. Terms of Use Another suggestion they put forward was to introduce a new drill, in which the cartridge was not bitten with the teeth but torn open with the hand. In contrast to their Indian predecessors, the British considered such refusals at times to be outright "mutinies" and therefore to be suppressed brutally. Pandey rebelled by shooting a British sergeant-major and a lieutenant. The revolt of 1857, which the British call the Indian Mutiny but many Indians prefer to think of as the First War of Independence, was the defining event in British imperial history. However, nearly every sepoy was either Muslima religion that forbids eating the fat or any other part of a pig, or Hinduwhere the same rule applies to cows. When soldiers of the Bengal army mutinied in Meerut on May 10, 1857, tension had been growing for some time. A small British army was improvised, which held the ridge before Delhi against greatly superior forces until Sir John Lawrence was able to send a siege train under John Nicholson. It was initiated by sepoys in the Bengal Presidency against the British officers. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. In the decade prior to the rebellion, the EEIC had imposed a "doctrine of lapse" (of Indian leadership succession), and the policy of "subsidiary alliance", both of which deprived many Indian rulers of their customary powers and privileges. Measures of prevention of future crises naturally began with the army, which was completely reorganized. Government was ostentatiously neutral, but Hindu society was inclined to regard the missionaries as eroding Hindu society without openly interfering. It came as a greater shock than the loss of the American colonies, and prompted reprisals far more hysterical and vicious than those visited on rebellious subjects elsewhere in the Empire. This took the form of Muslim millenarianism, with preachers in Lucknow foretelling the end of the raj. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. Mason, Philip (1974), page 226 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. The sepoys' British officers dismissed these claims as rumors and suggested that the sepoys make a batch of fresh cartridges, using a religiously acceptable greasing agent such as ghee or vegetable oil. They bore no message, and were identical to the breads cooked in every home in India, a staple part (even today) of the locals diet. To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org One could say that the major causes of this revolt were the usage of cow fat to grease rifle cartridges, the British attempting to convert Sepoys to Christianity, and the British taking over the town of Oudh. A keen cricketer and tennis player, he now lives in Delhi and serves as director of a few companies. Ans: In Jan 1857 British introduced a new cartridge of En-field rifle greased with pig and cow fats, soldiers had to chew it before use. The revolt failed in overthrowing British Rule. 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