Indian Mutiny

Question 1

Why did the Indian mutiny start?

Answer 1

• Began amongst sepoys in Bengal army. In 1857, grievances about pay and condition exploded.
• thought to be about cartridges and religious sensibilities, but really because of angry landlords and nobles deprived of land by governor-general Dalhousie

Question 2

How did the Indian mutiny start?

Answer 2

• sepoys refuse orders in feb ‘57 with others following suit. In Meerut, sepoys turned on British officers and a mob set on local Europeans. The sepoys took control over northern cities, trying to reappoint the old Mughal emperor.
• sepoys joined by urban and rural sections, discontented landowners and peasants who didn’t like high levels of tax alike.
• human suffering immense, emperors son killed, Delhi and Lucknow devastated, burnt villages, British officers and their families killed and mutineers tortured in the aftermath.
• British rule fully restored in 1858

Question 3

Governmental impacts of Indian mutiny

Answer 3

• India now under rule of British crown with a single centralised government
• ruler/ruled relationship soured
• westernisation possibility questioned
• brits became more religiously sensitive, but more distant
• legal systems and equality of opp. didn’t do much for worse off Indians
• most regarded new British rule with indifference

Question 4

What viceroy canning achieve on his tour between 1859 and 1861?

Answer 4

• returns land and titles to native Indians
• introduces star of India medals
• allowed Indian nobility into imperial assembly or statutory civil service
• opened English educational establishments

Question 5

Educational change after Indian mutiny

Answer 5

• unis and elite schools set up to produce ‘westernised oriental gentlemen’
• next 30 years 60,000 went to uni, and of all the students who graduated from Calcutta university by 1882 a third went into government and a few more went to legal services

Question 6

Economic changes due to mutiny

Answer 6

• growth of investment, especially in railways, which stimulated trade and development in previously unreachable areas
• some factories built, but the bulk of goods still came from the uk, so no heavy industry
• although subsistence farming still prevailed, tea farms grew from 1 in 1851 to 295 in 1871 and cotton production also grew in 80s and 90s

Question 7

Attitude change after mutiny

Answer 7

• brits thought new ‘benign rule’ was liberation for Indians

- tb Macauley thought educating Indians to be more British justified British dominance in India.