India on the eve of 1857

By 1856, the map of India looked very different from the map of 1750. The East India Company directly ruled Bengal, Bombay, Madras, the north-western provinces, and the Punjab, annexed in 1849 after the Anglo-Sikh wars, and it controlled the remaining princely states through Residents and treaties. Only a handful of large states, such as Hyderabad, Mysore, and the Maratha states that survived, kept internal autonomy, and even they could not conduct foreign policy without British approval.

The Company's army was the instrument of this power, and also its weakness. Sepoys, recruited largely from Awadh and the north, were paid less than British soldiers, denied promotion to senior ranks, and posted far from home, including overseas service that many believed cost them caste standing. The annexation of Awadh in 1856 struck at their homes directly: many sepoys came from Awadh, and the deposed king's court had been a source of employment and pride for their families.

Discontent was not limited to soldiers. Peasants faced high revenue and moneylender debt, artisans had lost markets to British cloth, rulers feared annexation under the Doctrine of Lapse, and religious leaders worried about missionary activity and social legislation that seemed to threaten custom. The introduction of the new Enfield rifle in the mid-1850s, with cartridges that soldiers believed were greased with cow and pig fat, gave all these grievances a single spark, because it touched the religious feelings of Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike.

India in early 1857 was therefore not a calm country disturbed by a single rumour. It was a country in which many different groups had separate reasons to resent British rule, and in which the Company's own army contained men from the very communities its policies had hurt. Understanding this background is essential, because the revolt that followed was not a mutiny alone, and it was not a national war alone either: it was both, and neither description by itself is enough.