The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India was much more than a 'sepoy mutiny'. It was a major event in South Asian and British colonial history that significantly challenged imperialism in India.

This fascinating collection explores hitherto ignored diversities of the Great Rebellion such as gender and colonial fiction, courtesans, white 'marginals', penal laws and colonial anxieties about the Mughals, even in exile. Also studied are popular struggles involving tribals and outcastes, and the way outcastes in the south of India locate the Rebellion. Interdisciplinary in focus and based on a range of untapped source materials and rare, printed tracts, this book questions conventional wisdom.

The comprehensive introduction traces the different historiographical approaches to the Great Rebellion, including the imperialist, nationalist, marxist and subaltern scholarship. While questioning typical assumptions associated with the Great Rebellion, it argues that the Rebellion neither began nor ended in 1857-58.

Clearly informed by the 'Subaltern Studies' scholarship, this book is post-subalternist as it moves far beyond narrow subalternist concerns. It will be of interest to students of Colonial and South Asian History, Social History, Cultural and Political Studies.

About the Author

Biswamoy Pati is Associate Professor at the Department of History, University of Delhi, India. His latest publications include two co-edited books published by Routledge The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India (with Mark Harrison, 2009) and India's Princely States (with Waltraud Ernst, 2007) and an edited volume entitled The 1857 Rebellion: Debates in Indian History and Society (2007).

Reviews

"The chapters add a fascinating depth and variety to any examination of this important period in colonial history... Pati has succeeded in producing an edition that achieves his purpose. Not only does it expand the geographic and chronological scale of the Rebellion, but the The Great Rebellion successfully contests colonial narratives that still seem to dominate today." - Robyn Curtis, University of canterbury; New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 12, 2 (December 2010)

"It is a pleasure to read because this book startles. It provokes more questions than it answers, which is important. Biswamoy Pati introduces, I believe, a whole new conceptual framework of looking at the Rebellion." - Milinda Bangerjee, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (2012)

Book Information
ISBN 9780415627450
Author Biswamoy Pati
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 380g