The Indian Rebellion 1857 - BBC, Berkeley, UCLA

In a short a time, three podcast series have started paying attention to the revolt in India in 1857. What began with disconcerted Indian foot-soldiers in the British colonial army - hence the rebellion is also called a mutiny - extended into a broad revolt which eventually even got the Mogul Emperor involved. After the fighting and the massacres neither India nor Britain would be the same.

This week's issue of BBC's In Our Time is dedicated to the Indian Rebellion and it is good to download it by Wednesday, before the shop will close. Melvyn Bragg has his guests pay a lot of attention to the roots of the revolt, to the factuality of the alleged massacres and eventually to the change it brought about. In Berkeley's course History 151c (The Peculiar Modernity of Britain) (feed) the perspective is obviously on Britain and the 5th lecture (The triumph of liberalism 1848/1857) deals among others with the Indian Rebellion and how it turned Britain into an empire and Queen Victoria into an empress.

UCLA's course on the History of British India, has countless references to the revolt and points to it in many of the lectures over and over again as the major turning point in British rule over India. Although the revolt failed, it spawned Indian nationalism and it is the first sign that this foreign rule on the subcontinent is not going to last. (feed)

Image: Wikimedia commons

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