The Indian Rebellion of 1857 resulted from increasing Indian concern with Lord Dalhousie, a Governor General who expanded British authority throughout India. He established railways, the telegraph system, and postal operations, and his “Doctrine of Lapse” allowed the East India Company to seize the revenue of various deceased princes’ estates between 1848 and 1856, fanning the flames of rebellion.
Increasing missionary activity, frustrations over the Persian language being replaced with English, as well as a strained economy, climaxed with sepoys (Indian soldiers in the British army) choosing to mutiny against British authority. This uprising across northern and central India led to a force of 60,000 marching to Delhi and rallying behind Emperor Bahadur Shah of the Mughal Empire. In September 1857 the British recaptured Delhi, murdered civilians and exiled the Emperor to Burma. The rebellion, considered India’s first war in the Indian Independence Movement, had failed, and in 1858 Queen Victoria audaciously proclaimed herself as the “Empress of India” to assume the direct government of India.
FURTHER READING
Bilwakesh, Nikhil. “‘Their Faces Were like so Many of the Same Sort at Home’: American Responses to the Indian Rebellion of 1857.” American Periodicals 21, no. 1 (2011): 1–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23025203.
McDermott, Rachel Fell, Leonard A. Gordon, Ainslie T. Embree, Frances W. Pritchett, and Dennis Dalton, eds. “THE EARLY TO MID NINETEENTH CENTURY: Debates Over Reform and Challenge to Empire.” In Sources of Indian Traditions: Modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, 3rd ed., 57–119. Columbia University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/mcde13830.10.