Loot! Look what our ancestors brought back from India.

When we were in India last month, we kept seeing signs in the various historical sites we visited suggesting that a lot of good stuff had been taken by the British in the 19th century and was now tucked away in various London museums. Back home, we decided to go to one of these London museums and see what we could find.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A to its many friends) has a collection celebrating the arts of South Asia (that’s India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) which it claims is “recognised as one of the largest and most important in the world”.

The amount of material on display is limited, but it is very beautiful. According to Wikipedia, the V&A is “the world’s largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design”, so I suppose I should not have been surprised at that beauty seems to be the main consideration in organising the display.

It looks very pretty but this assemblage of objects lacks any coherence

The V&A claims that their collection reflects “the rich heritage of South Asia and its complex history of global trade, immigration and colonial rule”. Sadly, I could see little evidence of this. For example, there are some illustrations from the 16th century Akbarnama, a volume commissioned by Akbar, arguably the greatest of the Mughal emperors, to celebrate his rule. The sumptuous pictures are shown without any of the text.

Akbar Receiving an Ambassador

In fairness to the V&A, they were probably removed from the book when it was “acquired” by the Commissioner of Oudh in 1859-62. I did like that “acquired”. The annexation of Oudh (or Avadh, as the pesky Indians of the time called it) was one of the precipitating factors in the Indian Mutiny. The Commissioner’s acquisition might reasonably be described as “loot”. The V&A rather shies away from that detail. To add insult to injury, one of the five pages on display is in a completely separate display case where, presumably, the curators felt that it looked prettier alongside other pictures rather than sitting with the other four where it logically belongs.

There are some important examples of Indian culture, like this picture of details of the decoration inside the Taj Mahal – all the more interesting because it shows parts of the upper galleries which are not visible to the public. Even here, though, the detail sits alone unsupported by even a photograph of the famous tomb. There is an example of how gemstones are fitted into marble – a key element of the Taj’s decoration – but, again, this is in a separate display with nothing linking the two.

Drawing showing detail of decoration in the Taj Mahal

A photograph I took at the Taj Mahal.

A significant amount of the display space isn’t even, strictly speaking, Indian art. Presumably it is the V&A’s interest in the “complex history of global trade, immigration and colonial rule” that accounts for so many items that have been made specifically for the export trade, like the Fremlin carpet, made around 1640 and incorporating the coats of arms of William Fremlin, an official of the East India Company. The label tells me that it would have been used as a table covering in England, rather than being put on the floor, which is interesting but tells us nothing about how carpets were used in India. (Hung on walls and used as curtains as well as, presumably, on the floor, since you ask.)

The Fremlin carpet

Outside the main room is a corridor where Hindu, Jain, Muslim and pagan religious images again make an attractive display. Time periods, geographical location, and faiths all mingle in Victorian confusion. They’re lovely to look at but tell you little about the cultures that gave rise to them.

I’ve never been a great believer in returning items to the countries they came from, but looking at this distinctively colonial approach to display here, I think of all those notices about Indian artefacts that vanished to England and I wonder if I should change my mind.

What do you think?

A Word from our Sponsor

After most of a lifetime of wanting to visit India, I’m happy to write about it for ages. But the reason for posting these pieces on my blog is to encourage people to read my book, Cawnpore, set during the Indian Mutiny/War of Independence of 1857. People who’ve read it have been very nice about it, but not nearly enough people have read it. I have kept the Kindle price at just £3.99 so as to make it easily affordable. Buy it and let me know what you think.

Here’s the LINK.

The Last Mughal

The Last Mughal

If you read last week’s blog post about Delhi’s Red Fort, you will have seen a reference to William Dalrymple’s book The Last Mughal. I started reading this before we went to India, read some more while we were there, and then came home and finished it. From which you can rightly conclude that it’s not a short book but it’s well worth the effort.

The Last Mughal describes life in one of the great courts of the world. As its secular power waned, so the Mughal court became a focus for high culture: a world dominated by artists and poets. Dalrymple brings that court to life and gives us some idea what we lost with its total destruction.

Inside the Red Fort today

The book keeps a tight focus on events in Delhi in the run up to the 1857 rebellion and its aftermath. Dalrymple makes a point of not discussing the wider conflict with the battles at Cawnpore/Kanpur and Lucknow. However, his summaries of the politics of the events and his analysis of the causes of the conflict and the way it played out are clear and concise and much better informed than those of many other people who write on this subject. Having produced  a novel set in 1857 India (Cawnpore) and then written various bits and bobs about the war, I’m amazed at how misunderstood events are.

Dalrymple’s writing is informed by his own research in the Indian National Archives and elsewhere, working his way through a mass of documentation:

… great unwieldy mountains of chits, pleas, orders, petitions, complaints, receipts, rules of attendance and lists of casualties, predictions of victory and promises of loyalty, notes from spies of dubious reliability and letters from eloping lovers

It is often said that the war of 1857 is particularly well documented. The British loved paperwork and have their own records of orders and memos. Civilians and soldiers wrote letters home that have survived to this day and after the fighting was over there were inquiries and trials and all this material is easily available to historians. Almost all the records that have been used by British historians, though, derive from British sources. Dalrymple’s book is unusual in that much of it is based on Indian material. It means that The Last Mughal provides an excitingly different view of what happened. Anyone who is seriously interested in the conflict would be wise to read it.

I’m not going to attempt to summarise the contents. It’s far too long to reduce to a few paragraphs in a review and too well-written to need a crib sheet. There are parts that I felt could be usefully shortened, but I suspect everybody will have different opinions has to which bits could go. There was a lot of detail about minor characters on both sides: minor princes and their mistresses; British junior officers and their wives. It was easy to get lost, especially given the close family relationships that meant a lot of overlapping names on both sides of the conflict. There’s an introductory list of the main characters with a quick paragraph about each one, but it could usefully be extended to include a lot more names.

There is also a lot of detail irrelevant to the main themes of the book. The account of “one very stout old lady” fleeing the rebels stuck in my mind. Trapped in Delhi, the only escape for one group was to jump from the walls. Faced with a 25 foot drop, the woman screamed and refused to jump. As they came under fire, “somebody gave her a push and she tumbled headlong in the ditch beneath”. She survived the fall and the story of her escape (told in a letter home from one of the men in the party) gives a vivid picture of the reality of the early days of the Mutiny, with Europeans fleeing for their lives. The stout old lady’s escape may not add anything to our understanding of the politics of revolt but it is the sort of detail that brings history alive. In some ways, the book would be improved by removing extraneous anecdotes, but in other ways it would be very much the poorer.

Dalrymple’s extensive use of contemporary accounts, quoted at length, leads to a problem that many historians face: that of whether, and how much, to systematise spelling. Places are referred to by both their European and native names and, in some cases, the native spelling varies from writer to writer. This can create confusion. There is a glossary, which can help but it’s at the back of the book and I didn’t realise it existed until rather late in the day. It’s also not immediately obvious, in a book with hundreds of unfamiliar terms, which of them might be found in the glossary. Had I known it was there, a great deal of flicking backwards and forwards would have been involved. A more systematic use of italicisation or emboldening to indicate when definitions were available might have been useful.

These are quibbles, though, and whichever approach Dalrymple had taken, I am sure he would have annoyed somebody. The book is an astonishing glimpse into a lost world as well as a brilliant account of the historical details of the end of the insurrection and the way that the British handled the aftermath.

It is in the account of the fall of Delhi and the atrocities that followed that the book has, I think, resonances for today.

There is no doubt that the Mutiny (in the early days it was, first and foremost an uprising of troops in British service) was attended by graphic acts of horrific violence, much of it directed against civilians and with terrible casualties amongst women and children. As the British organised a belatedly effective response to an outbreak that had taken them by surprise, the idea that they were fighting a legitimate war of vengeance became common. Many officers expressed the view that it was appropriate, and maybe even necessary, to kill every last one of the Indians who had risen against them and maybe anyone who might have sympathised with the uprising. Here is Lieutenant Charles Griffiths writing after the war was over:

“… Christian men and gallant soldiers, maddened by the foul murder of those nearest and dearest to them, steeled their hearts to pity and swore vengeance against the mutineers… The same feelings to some extent pervaded the breasts of all those who were engaged in the suppression of the Mutiny. Every soldier in our ranks knew that the day of reckoning had come for the atrocities which had been committed, and with unrelenting spirit dedicated himself to the accomplishment of that purpose … it was a war of extermination, in which no prisoners were taken and no mercy shown … Dead bodies lay thick in the streets and open spaces, and numbers were killed in their houses … many non-combatants lost their lives, our men, mad and excited, making no distinction.”

Dalrymple provides many details of the atrocities committed. They’re not an easy read: even the British authorities eventually agreed that things had gone too far.

It’s important to remember that some of the British involved in these atrocities had lived and worked alongside Indians for years. Some had Indian relatives by marriage. Yet they killed without mercy, with significant public support. The Delhi Gazette reported:

“Hanging is, I am happy to say, the order of the day here… Six or eight rebels are hanged every morning.”

It seems that, faced with terrible atrocities, people can turn on their enemies and exact a vengeance that goes beyond anything that was done to them and which later generations will be appalled by. We don’t have to look too hard to see similar behaviours today.

Another aspect of the British response to the uprising which echoes down to today was the way that the blame for everything was pinned on the Muslims. A show trial of the Emperor concluded that he had headed a Muslim conspiracy with “a Mahommedan clandestine embassy to the Mahommedan powers of Persia and Turkey.” It was, according to the prosecution, “a religious war for Mahommedan ascendancy.” The fact that the Mutiny had started among Hindu soldiers and had been supported by wide swathes of the local population was simply ignored. “Hinduism,” claimed the prosecution, “… is nowhere either reflected or represented.” Even more than a century and a half later, the British authorities will never allow the facts to get in the way of an anti-Muslim rant.

In summary, Dalrymple’s remarkable scholarship has produced a wonderful book casting new light on the events of 1857 and providing food for thought for those analysing some of the conflicts of the modern day. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in Indian history and has much to offer everybody.

The Red Fort

More from my trip to India…

One of the things I was particularly looking forward to seeing was the Red Fort in Delhi.  I am particularly interested in the events of 1857, commonly referred to in England as the Indian Mutiny. My book, Cawnpore, is set during this time and remains, of all my books, my personal favourite. The Red Fort does not feature in the novel, but the Indian forces in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) owed at least nominal loyalty to the Emperor of India in Delhi and his seat was of huge symbolic importance during the uprising. It was also considered, at the time, as one of the most beautiful palaces in the world, so an obvious place to visit.

Arriving at the fort, the first thing that strikes you is that it really is very red (it’s built of red sandstone).

It’s also very, very big. There’s quite a walk along the wall until you get to the impressive Lahori Gate.

Inside the gate you pass through a bazaar originally built as a private shopping mall for the women of the palace (the 17th century Chhatta Chowk).

Beyond that, though, what you find is a lot of empty space with buildings dotted about here and there.

The first (in line with the entrance) is the drum house. Here, drums above the gate would welcome ambassadors and other dignitaries into the palace. It was also used for reading out proclamations.

The Drum House (Naubat Kahna)

Across a lawn of parched grass, we came next to the Hall of Public Audience.

Beyond that was more parched grass where empty water channels marked the layout of what had once been the spectacular private gardens of the Emperor and, beyond them, a row of marble buildings that had been his apartments.

Stripped of wall hangings, curtains, furniture, and much of their decoration, the apartments are shadows of their former selves, but still give glimpses of the glory that once was.

Thanks to Wikipedia, we can compare a photograph of the Rang Mahal (the building on the right of my picture of the row of buildings) taken by Biswarup Ganguly with an 18th century painting of the same structure.

The sad truth is that after the fall of Delhi and the capture of the Emperor by the British, 80% of all the buildings in the fort were destroyed and those that were left were looted, jewelled decorations stolen, gold ripped from walls and ceilings and much of what remained vandalised by soldiers who saw the palace as a symbol of an Indian nationalism that they were determined to destroy. Even at the time, there were those who condemned the destruction of an architectural wonder.

The apartments that remain were spared mainly because they were used as offices and messes by the occupying British troops, but as isolated individual buildings they made little architectural sense. The Drum Tower, for example, used to stand in the middle of a wall that separated the core of the palace from the more public areas. Without the wall, the gate stands strange and alone. (It was used as the quarters of a British staff sergeant.) The harem apartments, which, on their own, took up an area twice the size of any European palace, were completely demolished and replaced by solid blocks of British barracks, some of which still stand. The area is thought to have contained three garden courts and more than a dozen other courts but no plans of the area were made before the British utterly destroyed it. It was a spectacular act of cultural vandalism, leaving the Red Fort just an echo of what was once one of the most beautiful palaces in the world.

Cawnpore

When the 1857 revolt reached the garrison at Cawnpore, General Wheeler, who commanded there, thought the rebels would loot the town and then press on to join the Emperor in Delhi. At first, it seemed he was right, but after starting towards Delhi, the rebels turned back an besieged Wheeler’s forces and the civilians who had sought shelter with them. The result, after weeks holding out against massively superior forces, was a massacre that became a byword for horror amongst the British troops and went some way to explain the crimes later committed against Delhi and its people.

My novel, Cawnpore, is set against the background of the events leading to the siege and its awful aftermath. It explores how decent people on both sides ended up doing such terrible things. It’s not an easy read (a lot of people have told me it reduced them to tears) but I think it’s the best thing I’ve written. It’s only £3.99 on Kindle and I’d love more people to read it.

More reading

If you want to know more about life in the palace and its destruction, I very strongly recommend William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal.

Jack and Jill Went Downhill

Jack and Jill Went Downhill

Another book review from me. It’s a bit of a change from the sort of book I usually write about, being by R J Gould who, according to Amazon, writes contemporary fiction about relationships or, bluntly, romances.

Jack and Jill meet on their first day at university and fall head-over-heels in love. Their love unites them despite their very different backgrounds. It is not enough, though, to keep them together faced with the pressures of working in 21st century London. He’s a City trader and she’s a teacher, both working ridiculous hours and constantly stressed. He turns to drugs and alcohol and occasional lovers. She nags a bit and eventually takes a lover of her own. There are authorial suggestions that they are both to blame, which seems a bit overly-generous to the patriarchy, but it’s still a credible portrait of a disintegrating marriage. The final straw is two very public scandals. Both make newspaper front pages, which brings out the Oscar Wilde in me: “To make one newspaper front page may be accounted a misfortune; to make two looks like a writer over-egging things.”

Jack and Jill have both screwed up and both regret it. It’s like the situation in the Jennifer Aniston movie, The Break-up. And, as with the movie, it’s a convincing story of how marriage problems escalate out of control and the distress that ensues.

How do things end? No spoilers here, as Gould is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and it is a rule of romance writing that you must have a Happy Ever After. So, implausibly, Jack and Jill bump into each other in a romantic city that they are both passing through (it’s a small world after all). Jack has given up the booze and pills and Jill is ready to forgive him. Our princess’s prince is back and they can ride off into the sunset together.

This would have been a much stronger story if Gould had stuck to his guns and had his couple (as in The Break-up) looking back on the life together that they had lost but accepting that sometimes we can’t get the toothpaste back in the tube. That, though, may be an ending that the romantic fiction market is not yet ready for. I wish it were. Gould writes well and (the odd appalling misogynistic family member apart) with layered characters who even a miserable old git like me is drawn to and cares about. It would just be better if it had ended with me shedding a reluctant tear, rather than drifting off into a sugar coma. Still, this is probably as edgy as hard-core romance readers are going to tolerate and they should enjoy the ride.

Jack and Jill Went Downhill is available on Kindle at £3.99.

British India to 1857: The Rise and Fall of the East India Company

British India to 1857: The Rise and Fall of the East India Company

If you follow me on Twitter or read last week’s blog post, you’ll know I’m just back from a holiday in India. I’d like to blog about India while the country is still top of my mind. Last week I did touch on how the war of 1857 (the Indian Mutiny or the First War of Independence depending on when and where you learned about it) still affects the way Indians view their history and their relationship with Britain, although not as much as you might expect. I thought that this week I’d take a look at the events that led up to the War of 1857. I’ve covered this before and my post about it remains one of the most widely read I’ve ever done, so it seems worth repeating for an audience that might not have been following me back when I wrote it.

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In the mid-19th century, India, the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown wasn’t, technically, part of the Empire at all. It was run by the East India Company, a commercial organisation, originally set up to trade with the Far East. Under the India Act of 1784, the activities of the Company were subject to direction from the British government, but the Company remained a commercial organisation with shareholders who were paid dividends from the Company’s substantial profits. How had we reached a situation where one of the world’s largest countries was being administered for profit by a private company?

For centuries, Europe had traded with the Far East. The spice trade was of vital economic importance as far back as the days of Ancient Rome. Look in your store cupboard, even today, and see how many of the spices we use come from the Far East. And remember that, in the days before refrigeration, spices were essential in making meat palatable.

Until the 15th century, trade routes to the East went overland and were controlled first by Arabs and later by the Ottoman Turks. It was not until 1498 that the Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, navigated round the Cape of Good Hope and opened a sea route from Europe to the Far East. This meant that European merchants could trade directly with their suppliers and a new age of maritime commerce was born.

Britain was late to the party. By the time that the Queen Elizabeth signed the original Royal Charter of the East India Company in 1600, the Portuguese and the Dutch were well established in the Far East. Repeatedly rebuffed by their rivals in the East Indies, Britain looked to the possibilities of India.

It was not until 1639 that the Company established its first permanent base in India, in Madras on the Bay of Bengal. In 1668, it acquired Bombay, and then Calcutta followed in 1690. These three “factories”, as they were known, were intended as trading outposts: places where merchants could warehouse goods imported and exported in the increasingly profitable trade between Britain and the Indian states.

By the 1740s, the main threat in India came not from the Portuguese or the Dutch, but from the French. Their principal trading point was at Pondicherry, less than 100 miles from Madras. In 1749, the local ruler died. There were two rival claimants for his throne. The French and the British, both trying to extend their own influence, each backed one of the rivals. Both trading companies had their own military forces to defend their activities and each supported their own choice for ruler with troops. Open war was underway by 1750.

Although the dispute was notionally between two Indian princes, involvement of French and British trading companies led, inexorably, to the involvement of the French and British governments. Both sides sent professional government troops to support their own trading companies.

Backed by the military and naval resources of Britain and France, the two companies had now become significant political forces in the region. At this point, in 1756, a separate war broke out a thousand miles away, where the nawab of Bengal attacked and occupied Calcutta. The military build-up around Madras meant that the British were in a position to respond decisively. Ships of the Royal Navy carried an army from Madras to Bengal. At the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757, Robert Clive, commanding the forces of the East India Company decisively defeated the Nawab of Bengal, supported by French troops. The defeat of the Nawab was of huge symbolic importance and Plassey came to be seen as marking the start of British rule in India.

Statue of Clive of India. Whitehall, London

Immediately following the victory at Plassey, Clive installed the British candidate, Mir Jafar, as Nawab of Bengal, Orissa and Bihar. Effectively, the East India Company now governed Bengal through a puppet ruler.

The tax revenues of these provinces now passed to the Company with Mir Jafar left responsible for justice and policing. (The Company took over even these residual powers in 1772.) All Frenchmen were expelled from Bengal. With the revenue from Bengal, the company was able to expand its efforts against the French further south and their hold over Pondicherry was destroyed in 1761.

India, at this time, was not a single country. The place was governed by local rulers, some with limited authority while some were absolute monarchs of huge areas of the subcontinent. All, though, recognised that the political and military presence of the British had changed the balance of power for ever. Some chose to make formal alliances with the British. Others sought to maintain some kind of independence by joining with the French.

The Sultan of Mysore allied with them to war on the Company in southern India in the late 1770s and 80s. His son, Tipu, became the most powerful threat to British hegemony. He styled himself the “Tiger of Mysore” with tiger motifs worked into his uniforms, cannons, cane handles, bed hangings, swords and thrones. His famous model of a full size tiger killing an East India Company soldier is now on display in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

Tipu Sultan sent agents to Europe to buy arms that might enable him to meet the British on equal terms. Intelligence reports suggested he bought 50 cannon, 80 gun carriages, and 100,000 cannonballs, besides muskets and sabres. His army was built up to the point where he did pose a real threat to the British, but he was ultimately defeated, dying in battle in 1799.

By now, the Company was committed to Indian politics. Company troops had to defend the borders of those rulers that the Company had put in power and this meant coming to terms with their neighbours. In some cases “coming to terms” meant crushing militarily. In others, alliances were formed. The continuing involvement of the French, trying to regain territories that they had lost, and carrying on their Revolutionary Wars in the Indian theatre, meant that the Company continually felt under threat. Rulers who had not been won over to the British side might always ally with the French. Every new territorial gain, therefore, meant more territory that had to be defended, which, in turn, meant the need for further expansion.

The British conquest of India, state by state, was far from being motivated solely by the need for self-defence. The settlement after Plassey, gave the East India Company vast tax revenues. Clive predicted a £2 million annual revenue surplus (an incredible sum in 1760), which led to a 100% rise in the price of Company stock.

The military also benefited directly from the campaigns that accompanied the Company’s expansion. The word “loot” comes from the Hindu word for booty and its adoption into the English language gives an indication of the enthusiasm with which European troops plundered their enemies. Everyone from the humblest private to the general could expect to get rich should they survive a war in India.

As the Company moved from a commercial to a political entity, trade became an increasingly unimportant part of its activities. In 1833 the Charter Act ended the Company’s trading rights in India, as trading was deemed to be incompatible with ruling. The East India Company was therefore the ultimate example of privatisation. The entire government of one of the largest countries in the world had been outsourced to a private supplier whose profits came from the tax surplus of the nation that they governed. (Thomas Babington Macaulay, a leading British politician who served on the  Supreme Council of India, described it as “the strangest of all governments … designed for the strangest of all empires”.)

Government for profit clearly had a vast potential for abuse. A clear example of this came early in the East India Company’s rule, with the Bengal Famine of 1770. This is estimated to have killed around 10 million people – about a quarter of the population of the province. During this time, the government of the East India Company took no effective measures to reduce starvation but, instead, increased land taxes and encouraged the growing of non-food crops (including opium) instead of the desperately needed rice.

Despite horrors such as the famine, many aspects of British rule were benign. In a time when communications with India were slow, British administrators would spend years in post, often not returning to Britain for long periods. In general, the late 18th century saw a relaxed coexistence between the Company’s servants and the native rulers. Many pleasures were shared, with British officers often enjoying lavish hospitality from native rulers.

Initially too, intermarriage was encouraged, with the Company giving cash gifts when their employees had children with Indian women, on the basis that the children would grow up to soldier for the Company. Colonel James Skinner, the founder of a famous cavalry troop, Skinner’s Horse, fathered a substantial Anglo-Indian dynasty. According to his family he had seven wives, while legend claims he had fourteen. In appropriately multi-denominational style, Skinner built a mosque for one Muslim wife, a temple for a Hindu one and then his own church in Delhi, where he was buried in 1841.

The result of such good relationships was a European ruling class that, for a while at least, demonstrated some understanding of India and a real interest in improving the economy of the country. The commitment of enlightened European rulers to their Indian subjects was rewarded with a surprising degree of loyalty and respect by many of the Indians.

By the mid-19th century, though, such mutual respect and understanding was breaking down. One in three wills made by Company servants between 1780 and 1785 made provision for Indian wives or mistresses. Between 1805 and 1810, it was down to one in four and by the middle of the century, such provisions had almost entirely disappeared. A new breed of administrators was ruling India, often contemptuous of all things native. Christian missionaries, whose activities had been restricted by the Company until 1833, were now proselytising widely in a country which was not naturally inclined to Christianity. Changes in the structure of the Army had reduced the pay and promotion opportunities of native soldiers. Perhaps most seriously, the British now controlled so much of India that they were increasingly ruthless in their manipulation of the law in order to seize those few states that remained even notionally independent.

By the time of my novel, Cawnpore, British rule had lasted almost 100 years. A trading company, still structured as a commercial organisation, was ruling over around 200 million people. It was a time of technological and social change, yet the administration was increasingly out of touch with the people and the army was restless. The scene was set for revolution.

In 1857 a rumour spread that the cartridges issued to native troops had been greased with pig and beef fat, making them unclean for both Moslems and Hindus. The story about the fat may well have been untrue. Despite official inquiries, no one will ever know for sure. On 24th April Colonel Carmichael-Smyth of the 3rd Light Cavalry took it on himself (against the advice of many of his officers) to insist that his men drill with the new cartridges. The men refused and 85 were convicted of mutiny. On May 9th, the men were paraded in chains before their regiment at Meerut in north west India and marched off to jail. Shamed by the treatment of their comrades, the regiment rose in revolt on Sunday 10th May, 1857. The Indian Mutiny had begun.

What started as a mutiny in one small outpost became a revolt that swept across the sub-continent and nearly saw Britain driven from its most important colonial possession. When it was over, millions had died, either in the fighting or the reprisals that followed. The East India Company was abolished soon afterwards. The British continued to rule for almost another hundred years, but the relationship between rulers and ruled had changed forever.

Cawnpore

My book, Cawnpore, is set around the siege of Cawnpore, which was a particularly terrible incident in a particularly horrible war. It’s my personal favourite of all the books I’ve written. It’s the second of my books to feature John Williamson, but it’s completely self-contained, so you don’t have to read The White Rajah first. It’s available as an e-book or in paperback.

Cawnpore has not got anything like the sales of my James Burke books, which I think is a pity because people have said some very nice things about it:

“For anyone who has a love for this period, Cawnpore is probably one for you.” Historical Novel Society

“All that historical fiction should be: absorbing, believable and educational.” – Terry Tyler in Terry Tyler Book Reviews

The Kindle edition is an absurdly inexpensive £3.99. Please buy it.

The photo at the top of this post shows part of the royal palace within Delhi’s Red Fort.