ABSTRACT
However one interprets the events of the fateful year of 1857, it is a date to conjure with in modern South Asian history. The year witnessed a serious military mutiny and very large-scale civilian uprisings which, for a fleeting moment, threatened to bring British rule to an end exactly one hundred years after the first colonial conquest in Bengal. Colonial officials-turnedhistorians usually referred to the uprising of 1857 as the sepoy mutiny. Early twentieth-century nationalist commentators proudly described it as the first war of Indian independence. There is no agreement among historians whether the revolt was a forward-looking freedom movement or a backward-looking restorationist struggle – a feudal reaction led by landed magnates or a peasant rebellion of the wretched of the earth; a ‘secular’ movement cutting across communitarian affiliations or a religiously inspired jihad (holy war); an anti-colonial revolt or a civil war pitting resisters against collaborators. There was probably a bit of all of these in the complex events of 1857, which has made its historiography somewhat confusing and confused. Yet this watershed year has also been the subject of some fine scholarship. Our aim is to assess the importance of the various strands and identify some points of emphasis.
