The book deals with the first sepoy mutiny at Barrackpore in 1824 that took place thirty three years before the great Indian Mutiny of 1857. Until the present monograph is published except a very brief reference of it nobody knew about the magnitude and character of this mutiny especially the manner in which it was supressed unprecedented in the history of the mutinies in the armed forces in the colonial India and abroad. Actually I had no previous plan to write a separate monograph on the first sepoy mutiny at Barrackpore in 1824. The main area of my research during the last 20 years has been on The Role of the Indian Sepoys in the British Imperial wars outside India and the apportionment of costs between the British Imperial government in England and the British Indian Government during the period 1762-1899. During the last 10 years seven papers have so far been published, some in the proceedings of the Indian History Congress and some in other learned journals and periodicals and the whole work has been planned to be published in two volumes. The volume I is for the period 1762-1826 covering the sepoy expeditions from Calcutta, Bombay and Madras to Manila (1762-64), Ceylon (1781), Ceylon 1795-96, Egypt (1801-02), Java and Mauritius (1810-12) and Burma (1824-26). While the volume II is intended to cover the period 1840-1899 including the sepoy expeditions to China (1840-1858), 1860, Persia 1856, Abbysinia (1866-67), Perak (1875), Egypt (1882), Sudan 1884, 1896, 1899 and China 1899. One of the main sub-areas of both the volumes is the sepoys resistance against overseas expedition and in the course of my search for the original records at the India Office Library in London I had been stuck with the problem of retrieving the records of the sepoy mutiny at Barrackpore in 1824 when three Bengal Native Infantry Regiments, 26", 47 and the 62 took an oath with the water of the Ganges and Tulsi leaves in the hand that they would not march to Burma on board ship unless and until their long standing grievances were met. This followed the violent mutiny on a grand scale for the first time at Barrackpore, when the Royal Artillery was secretly brought in at Barrackpore from the Fort William and Dum Dum and on the early morning of 2 November 1824 the three mutinous regiments on parade were blown off killing 200 on the spot and wounding unknown numbers.
The sepoy mutiny at the Barrackpore Military cantonment in November 1824 is the first organized resistance of the East India company's north Indian sepoys against the use of the Indian troops for the Company's overseas expedition. Since 1762 the south Indian troops were despatched to Manila (1762). Ceylon (1781), Amboyana (1795), Ceylon (1796). Egypt(1801-02) and Mauritius and Java (1810-12) against the Spaniards, the Dutch and the French but the Company faced no resistance from the sepoys as their basic incentives were guaranteed before their embarkation. In the mutiny of Barrackpore for the first time in the history of the sepoys under the company and the Raj an abrupt decision was taken by the Commander in Chief to undertake complete extermination of three mutinous native regiments as they re-fused to march to Burma unless some of their demands were met.
Mutiny in any form, though very infrequent, is a common phenomenon in the military establishment of any country, free or dependent.
The term mutiny may be defined as collective insubordination or com-bination of a group of soldiers to resist or to induce other fellow soldiers to disobey the orders of a lawful military authority. This dis-obedience may further be explained as an open and wilful defiance of a military authority and of a "lawful command given personally and given in the execution of his office by a superior officer." Religious and social custom, howsoever strong and binding it might be, upon the personal life, cannot be regarded as justifiable excuse to neglect or refuse to obey the military order. Troops, however, in certain circumstances, may be justified to refuse order from the superior authority if it were illegal, as for example, if they were ordered to fire on the innocent, unoffending and peaceful bystanders, a phenomenon, except in the Nazi Germany in the last century, is yet to be recorded in the military history of the world.
The cause of the mutiny may be varied as variously viewed by the military authority. It may be the economic grievances on pay, pension, promotion and other benefits or social, cultural or religious customs or any other perception of the mutinous troops externally or internally motivated by secret political objective in an attempt to destabilize the ruling authority. Racial and ethnic prejudice of the military authority against the troops of different ethnic origin may also cause the discontent and dissatisfaction amongst the troops leading to collective insubordination and to mutiny. This phenomenon is broadly absent in the mutinies among the troops of the free countries of Europe and America. But in the countries of Asia, Africa and West Indies dominated by the European powers, where the subject race was employed by the colonial authority as its troops, race, colour and class constitute the dominant factor not only in the origin and development of mutiny amongst the native troops but determine the mode of suppressing the mutiny and the degree of punishment of the mutineers."
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