The Telegraph and the Uprisings of 1857

Abstract

The uprisings of 1857 were a major turning point in the history of British rule in India and an equally major test for the telegraph system recently built in India. 1857 was a communication crisis of enormous proportions for the British in India, and the telegraph has conventionally played a redemptive role in the huge volume of narratives generated around the uprisings. These uprisings cannot be limited to the years 1857 and 1858, and they were still echoing in central India while the professional and English speaking literati were negotiating the founding of the Indian National Congress in the port cities in 1885. So the term ‘1857’ has a much wider meaning both in terms of content and extent than the evocation of a single year indicates: a similar example is the term ‘1789’ in the history of France (though Stokes preferred the parallel with 1848: a ‘failed revolution’).¹