ABSTRACT
The middle of the nineteenth century represents a caesura in the history of the South Asian subcontinent. Following the Great Rebellion (1857-9), persistent military operations and an aggressive policy of annexation allowed the Company State to expand into further areas of the subcontinent; this was especially the case in present-day Myanmar (former Burma) and in northwestern India, the Panjab and Afghanistan. Political changes also accompanied the acquisition of the Company State by the British Crown as it then evolved into the British Raj. This ultimately brought with it a “traditionalisation” of society. Seen from a social perspective, such changes sparked a number of far-reaching social dislocations, as on the one hand the brahmans, recognised as scriptural elite, enjoyed a restoration of their former social-political influence under the colonial regime, whilst on the other peasants experienced the effects of increasing poverty and deprivation. The ruptured social edifice mirrored the dramatic transformations that were also underway in the economic sector, which had had varying degrees of influence in the different regions of the subcontinent. The first half of the nineteenth century was marked by increasingly tense
relations resulting from mixed economic and political developments, which the Company State was unable to solve, or rather did not take seriously enough to deem necessary of solving. Attempts at “modernising” society, the economy and the polity were undertaken according to European notions without regard for the actual situation found in South Asia. The Company State noticeably distanced itself from the political and constitutional framework of the Mughal Empire as it no longer observed the required ritual form of the established ceremonies (darbar), thereby compromising the sovereign, the Mughal, of the state. The Indian rulers, as well as the intelligentsia in the courts and in the seats of royal power, viewed this with both suspicion and disapproval. At the same time, the Indian subjects of the EIC became more suspicious of the British whilst, simultaneously, the EIC also increasingly alienated itself from the political fabric of the Mughal Empire. This led to a rebellion against foreign rule in 1857 which, at the same time, was also seen as a war of liberation targeted against the external regime and displayed glimpses of a developing local patriotism.
