Indian Rebellion of 1857
1857–58 uprising against British Company rule
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power, including military forces, on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 as a mutiny of sepoys of the company's garrison in Meerut, a town 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions, chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a military threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859.
The name of the revolt is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence.
The Indian rebellion was fed by resentments born of diverse perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, summary treatment of some rich landowners and princes, and scepticism about British claims that their rule offered material improvement to the Indian economy. Many Indians rose against the British; however, many also fought for the British, and the majority remained seemingly compliant to British rule. Violence, which sometimes betrayed exceptional cruelty, was inflicted on both sides: on British officers and civilians, including women and children, by the rebels, and on the rebels and their supporters, including sometimes entire villages, by British reprisals; the cities of Delhi and Lucknow were laid waste in the fighting and the British retaliation.
After the outbreak of the mutiny in Meerut, the rebels quickly reached Delhi, whose 81-year-old Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was declared the Emperor of Hindustan.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Indian Rebellion of 1857” as 1857–58 uprising against British Company rule. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as 1857–58 uprising against British Company rule. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q129864. The Library of Congress control number is sh85064921. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1857, 1858 and 1859.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indian Rebellion of 1857” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.