Winds of Change

With the end of the First World War, India has been promised reform and some form of self government. As the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms are drafted, hardliners within the Government of India write their own law: the Rowlatt Act. Protests erupt across India, mostly peaceful but some violent, and in the Punjab city of Amritsar the British panic. Echoes of the 1857 Mutiny loom large in Anglo-Indian m...

The British Empire goes to war, and India is taken along with it. Hundreds of thousands of Indians are part of the war effort all over the world, and Indian nationalists and British liberals hope this display of loyalty will be rewarded. Indian revolutionaries are not prepared to wait for freedom to come to India, and plot a 2nd Indian Mutiny. The Imperial War Cabinet and the Montagu-Chelmsford Re...

Indian Nationalists split into Moderates and Radicals, as British Viceroys dodge bombs. Subscribe to the mailing list at LangnessMedia.com Thank you to my guest historians: Mark Condos, Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Global History at King's College London, and author of The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India, 1849-1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres...

Subscribe to the mailing list at LangnessMedia.com Thank you to my guest historians: Mark Condos, Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Global History at King's College London, and author of The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India, 1849-1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Janam Mukherjee, Associate Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan Univers...

British retaliation for the massacres and mutinies of 1857 is immediate and brutal. Mass executions of Indian prisoners and civilians follow the armies of reconquest, with only minimal interest in whether any of them were guilty. The leaders of the rebellion - Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi, Tatya Tope, and the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah - are defeated, driven into exile, or killed in battle. But t...

The Indian Mutiny. The War of Indian Independence. The Indian Uprising. Three names for a conflict which begins in Meerut in May 1857, and ends eighteen months later. After months of growing tension betweent the Indian sepoys and their European officers, full of miscommunication, assumptions, and mutual suspicion, the sepoys mutiny at Meerut, killing their officers and marching on Delhi. Subscribe...

After the death of Aurangzeb, the United East India Company benefitted from the political chaos of 18th century India. Allying with, fighting against, and eventually dominating the Nawabs of Bengal and Arcot, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Peshwa of the Maratha Confederacy, and the Sultans of Mysore. At the Battles of Plassey and Buxar, Company generals like Sir Robert Clive asserted British authorit...

From its first voyage in 1600, the English East India Company built up factories, outposts, and colonies all across the Indian Ocean world. After being chased out of the Spice Islands by the Dutch in the Amboyna Massacre, the Company focused in Asia. From strongholds in Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, the East India Company expanded its influence. Throughout the 17th century, the Company faced an im...

From the East India Company to the "Mutiny" of 1857, through the World Wars, to Independence and Partition, Winds of Change will cover the whole history of the Indian freedom struggle. With the help of expert historians, we will learn how the British Empire in India rose and fell. We will cover the lives of major figures in this cause, such as Nehru, Jinnah, Ambedkar and, of course, Gandhi, and th...