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The School of History and Classics at the Edinburgh University undertook a two-year long project in 2007 to re-examine the historical details of the mutiny of 1857. One of the results is a seven-volume set of papers on different aspects of the mutiny. The first three are under review here. The international collaboration that these volumes represent is rare in the field of Indian history. The managers of the project as also the participants of this international collaboration have managed to independently investigate some very interesting aspects of the events of mutiny. The sheer size of the material that the Edinburgh project has been able to put together in these volumes is commendable. What we see in the academic essays under review is just one small part of the larger project wherein the Edinburgh academics have succeeded in creating an interactive website on the mutiny as also produce information packages for use by schoolchildren. Till now much effort has been spent by commentators on figuring out whether the mutiny was a war of independence, a peasant rebellion or an example of how a mismanaged army reacts to cultural intrusion from an alien religion. These volumes represent, in contrast, a comprehensive effort to go beyond the broad narratives on the mutiny and examine micro-details. The 13 essays in the first volume tell of the events that happened before the mutiny. Dirk Kolff's essay deserves special mention. He suggests that the usual time for going out on military exercises in India has been around October, marked by the Dussehra festival. The mutineers of Meerut were doomed to failure since they mistimed their rebellion by five months-the mutiny began in May of 1857-and found it difficult to rope in the ambitions of people from the moffusil in kicking out the Company from India. Kolff makes his point on the basis of events of 1824, when the difficulties in executing the Burma campaign arose. Even Ranjit Singh in Punjab, began to play with ideas of crossing the Sutlej and annexing British territory. The Thugs in Central India were already testing the limits of the Company's military control as Tom Lloyd's essay shows. When even the prostitutes of the bazaar, as soon as the troubles began, taunted the men for not giving it to the British, it was clear that there was no love lost for the British in India. Across the country people hoped that something bad would happen to the British. Volume Two (11 papers) focusses on the diverse British responses, in India and in England, to the mutiny. There is much here that is broadly known publicly. Especially the fear that the whites had of their women being sexually humiliated or the completely artificial construction of the bloody mindedness of the Indians by the white rulers has been much commented upon. It is the filling up the details of that broad picture that makes this volume of considerable interest. Brahmanical cunning, Christian charity, 'manly missionaries' and much else is brought to light. The work of Indian intermediaries during the mutiny period too is highlighted. Here one finds, inter alia, a most interesting description of the visit of the last royal delegation from Awadh to England before that principality was abolished by the British in the aftermath of the mutiny. Volume Three (11 papers) examines the mutiny and the responses it elicited across the world. The new media and the telegraph, played a major role in carrying the messages of the mutiny within the country and to other parts of the world. The Irish nationalist movement tried to benefit from it but could not; the Russian Tsar was beseeched for support by some of the mutiny leaders but could not provide anything substantive; the French too kept a close watch on the events in India in the hope of gaining some benefit. It would have been interesting if there had also been a paper that dealt with the preparations that the British government made to handle the foreign policy implications of the mutiny. One did miss a more detailed inquiry into young Marx's dismissal of the mutiny much as his ideological descendants dismissed another mutiny, that of 1942, as being of no positive consequence.
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