To what extent was 1857 an example of colonial genocide? A study of colonial violence during the Indian Uprising of 1857-59

  • James Evelegh Edinburgh University

Abstract


The 1857-59 Indian Uprising was a cataclysmic event in the history of the British Empire in India and would witness monumental and shocking scenes of violence on both sides of the conflict. The Uprising has become something much debated and discussed within Indian and British history, and an exploration of the fundamental brutality of the conflict, albeit in this case on the British side, is an important element of better understanding such an important historical event. This article therefore explores the British Army's use of violence against Indian Sepoys and ordinary civilians during the Uprising and works to explore as to whether this approached something akin to a genocide, as has previously been suggested.

 

 

Author Biography

James Evelegh, Edinburgh University
Recent History MA Hons graduate of the Edinburgh University for the 2013 class.

References

Primary Sources:

Charles Griffiths, A Narrative of the Siege of Delhi (London: John Murray) 1910

Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, Letters Written During the Indian Mutiny (London: Macmillan) 1924

Henry Metcalfe, The Chronicle of Private Henry Metcalfe (London: Cassell) 1953

General Neill’s orders to Major Renaud in John William Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers: illustrative of the history of the civil and military services of India (London: A. Strahan) 1867

General Neill’s personal letter dated August 1st 1857 in The London Times, Monday, Sep 28, 1857; pg. 8; Issue 22797 from The Times Digital Archive Online

Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, Letters Written During the Indian Mutiny (London: Macmillan) 1924

Julia Haldane, The Story of Our Escape from Delhi in 1857 (Agra: Brown and Sons)

Reginald Wilberforce, Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny: being personal reminisces of Reginald G. Wilberforce compiled from a diary and letters written on the spot, with illustrations (London: John Murray) 1894

Selections from the letters, despatches and other state papers from the Government of India, 1857-58 (Calcutta: Military Dept. Press) 1893

Thomas Lowe, Central India During the Rebellion of 1857 and 1858 (London: Longman, Green & Co.) 1860

Thomas Marshman, Memoirs of Major General Sir Henry Havelock (London: Longman, Green & Co.) 1860

Torture Commission Report in Investigation of Tortures in India in On Colonialism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House) 1960

The Times, Thursday, Sep 17, 1857; pg. 9; Issue 22788 from The Times Digital Archive Online

General Neill’s personal letter dated August 1st 1857 in The London Times, Monday, Sep 28, 1857; pg. 8; Issue 22797

William Forbes Mitchell, Reminisces of the Great Mutiny, 1857-59 (New Delhi: Asian Education Services) 2002

William Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary (New York: Klaus Reprint Co) 1957


Secondary Sources:

Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge) 2006

Amaresh Misra in The Guardian, Friday 24 August 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/24/india.randeepramesh

Anna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: face to face killing in twentieth century warfare (London: Granta Books) 1999

Bernard S. Cohn, ‘Representing Authority in Victorian India’ in The Invention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1992

Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The brutal end of Empire (London: Jonathon Cape) 2005

Crispin Bates, Subalterns and Raj: South Asia Since 1600 (London: Routledge) 2007

Crispin Bates and Gavin Rand, Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857: Volume 4: Military Aspects of the Indian Uprising (Sage Publications: 2013)

David Andersen, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s dirty war in Kenya and the end of empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson) 2005

Denis Judd, The British Imperial Experience, from 1765 to the present (London: Harper Collins) 1996

Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press) 2009

Elizabeth Kolsky, Colonial Justice in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 2010

Gavin Rand ‘Martial races’ and ‘imperial subjects’: violence and governance in colonial India, 1857–1914. European Review of History 2006, 13 (1), pp. 1-20

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: World Publishing Company) 1961

Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich) 1970

John William Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers: illustrative of the history of the civil and military services of India (London: A. Strahan) 1867

John Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire (London: Bookmarks) 2006

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Investigation of Tortures in India in On Colonialism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House) 1960

Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity Press) 2007

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (London: Allen Lane) 1977

Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (London: Hambledon & London) 2005

Otto Triffterer (2001). ‘Genocide, Its Particular Intent to Destroy in Whole or in Part the Group as Such’ Leiden Journal of International Law, 14, pp. 399­408

Richard Gott, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (London: Verso Books)

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, “Satan Let Loose Upon the Earth” The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857’ Past and Present (1990) 128(1): 92-116

Samuel Totten & Paul R. Bartrop (eds.), The Genocide Studies Reader (London: Routledge) 2009

Sashi Bhusan Chaudhuri, Theories of the Indian Mutiny, 1857-59: a study of the views of an eminent historian on the subject (Calcutta: World Press) 1965

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (eds.) Rethinking 1857 (New Delhi: Orient Longman) 2007

William A. Schabas (2001). ‘The Jelisic Case and the Mens Rea of the Crime of Genocide’ Leiden Journal of International Law, 14, pp. 125­139
Published
01-May-2014
How to Cite
Evelegh, J. (2014). To what extent was 1857 an example of colonial genocide? A study of colonial violence during the Indian Uprising of 1857-59. The South Asianist Journal, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk/article/view/230