![]() Undoubtedly, the Bengal Army took the lead through their initial mutinies, but they quickly tried to politicise and widen the event through asking the last Mughal Emperor to reassert his claims and reestablish the old Mughal Empire. The truth was obviously somewhere in between. It was unusual in that it did attract Muslims and Hindus to the cause, but the event was clearly confined to Northern India in general and Bengal in particular. It is clear why they would like to brand this event as a nationalist uprising. Post 1947 Indian Nationalists have thought to refer to the events as India's First Nationalist Uprising. The British recognised that there were a number of fellow travellers who joined in and took advantage of the collapse of authority throughout Northern India, notably Ghazis and Gujars. Indeed the British were fortunate that it was only the Bengal Army, with a few exceptions, the Bombay and Madras armies stayed remarkably quiescent. The British authorities firmly regarded the event as a mutiny by large sections of the Bengal army. The central authority of the Mughals was so weak they could offer little resistance to the East India Company and its increasingly massive sepoy army.One hundred and fifty years after the events of 1857, there is still great debate in what they should actually be called. Most stopped supporting the Mughal army and paying taxes. By the 1800s, the Mughal Empire was a much smaller and weaker state, whose authority was recognized only by some princes and local governors. Sepoys helped expand the domination of the East India Company across South Asia and were shipped abroad to expand the British Empire overseas. Also, you could forget about ever being promoted to higher ranks in the army, because only your British co-workers would get those jobs. Whether Muslim or Hindu, you and your fellow sepoys would be expected to adapt your religions and culture to the needs of the army. However, once employed you would soon be faced with racial discrimination and your religious beliefs would be challenged by EIC policies. If you were a young man in India needing an honest job that paid well, joining the Company army as a sepoy would have been appealing. Let's look at the expansion of British control on the Indian subcontinent and the differing perspectives of the 1857 uprising by Indians against "the Company." ![]() That included British troops as well as thousands of locally recruited Indian troops called sepoys. Any resistance to EIC control was met with a military response. This policy meant that if the British deemed the rulers of those states "incompetent," or if they lacked a proper heir, the EIC could just take over the territory and rule it directly themselves. Under a policy called the Doctrine of Lapse, the EIC took control over more than 25 states in India in the 1800s. But it also conquered and ruled over an increasing number of Mughal territories and independent princely states, so its "business" was pretty much imperialism. ![]() Sometimes simply called "the Company" the EIC was indeed a business that did international trade. The British East India Company (EIC) intensified its efforts to collect taxes and dominate territories in this vast, populous region. In 1783, Great Britain, stinging from the American Revolution and loss of 13 promising colonies, took a closer look at the Indian subcontinent.
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