While certainly a military insurrection, the Indian Mutiny developed into a major regional insurgency in the north and centre of the sub-continent. The British authorities faced an enenmy made up of Indian regular soldiers, whom ironically they had armed and trained themselves, as well as men aggrieved and displaced by the spread of British rule. Rumours of a plot to pollute the Indian soldiers of the East Inida Company's army inflamed deep-seated hostility and suspicions. The resulting confilct saw horrific war crimes, crimes agaisnt humanity and ethnic cleansing - to use recognisable modern parlance - committed indiscriminately by both sides. By any definition the Mutiny was a 'bloody civil war' as Queen Victoria so famously described it. Mutiny and Insurgence in British India 1857-58 puts these dramatic events of a century and a half ago into their historical, constitutional and economic context. Using official documents, biographies, personal memoirs and little known regimental histories, it tells how staesmen, genrals, ordinary soldiers and non-combatants met the challenges of war. As well as describing the campaign, it analyses the longer term effects of the conflict on the Raj and the development of the British Army. AUTHOR: Dr. Tony Heathcote, born in 1936 in Enfield, Middlesex, attended the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where he read History, acquired some Persian and Urdu, and wrote his PhD thesis on British Policy and baluchistan. He Spent his career at the RMA Sandhurst, retiring in 1997 as the senior curatorial officer in the MOD. He was for thirty years an officer in the Reserves, beginning in the Royal Artillery, Territorial Army, and ending in Maritime Intelligence, Royal Auxiliary Air Force. 8 pages og=f b/w illustrations
