1857 Rebellion Succeeds?

So for my first AH thread I want to ask two questions( assume that they are unrelated to one another)

1. Could the Indian Rebellion of 1857 succeed?

2. If it did succeed (either through better support or major obstacles butterflied away) how long would the Indian states stay independent and would its general ramifications be?
 

Thande

Donor
Welcome to the board. We have discussed this question before and there isn't a general consensus. My view is that it's hard to see how the Mutiny could have succeeded as there doesn't seem to have been any central guiding organisation or goal behind it beyond the obvious one of throwing the EIC out. Perhaps the EIC could have been thrown out of part of India (in particular the north-west) but I tend to think it could have held on in its old strongholds such as Bengal regardless of events elsewhere.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The Indian Mutiny DID present a threat to British rule in India as a whole. The fact that the garrisons in Bengal and a few other places did not revolt was a very near-run thing (the first major 1857 attempt at a mutiny, in fact, took place in Bengal), and had this happened many other dominoes would have been knocked over.

There is also the fact that the British attack on Delhi in September of 1857 came VERY close to being repulsed. Indeed, when one reads the accounts of the battle, it is amazing that the British managed to pull it off. And had it failed, not only was it entirely possible that the Delhi Field Force would have ceased to exist, but many heretofore loyal sepoy units would have switched sides, and many loyal princes would have raised the banner of rebellion. British rule would have been shattered.

The problem for the mutineers was that they had no real plan for what to do if they ever succeeded in driving the British out. The rebel sepoys didn't particularly like the Emperor and treated him with great disrespect. The Hindu sepoys and Muslim sepoys were virtually at one another's throats. If the British had been driven out, the result would have been virtual anarchy.
 
Even if the rebellion succeed, the Brits would come back in within six months to a year's time to pick up the pieces, and if somehow they were kept for longer than that then you'd see a minor European coalition going in, à la the Opium Wars or the Taiping Rebellion. Likely the French joining them in return for a restoration of French rights and influence in the subcontinent.
 
Even if the rebellion succeed, the Brits would come back in within six months to a year's time to pick up the pieces, and if somehow they were kept for longer than that then you'd see a minor European coalition going in, à la the Opium Wars or the Taiping Rebellion. Likely the French joining them in return for a restoration of French rights and influence in the subcontinent.

In your two examples, the coalition was not going to subjugate an entire subcontinent, and I'm skeptical that such events would have transpired. As for the general questions from the OP, I feel like your best POD would be for some kind of leader to emerge for the rebellion. If it had more planning, then perhaps more Indians would have joined in and the rebellion as a whole would have had more success. The problem with predicting a post-independence India in 1857 is that we need to know how India gained Independence to see what the nation would look like.
 
The Indian Mutiny DID present a threat to British rule in India as a whole. The fact that the garrisons in Bengal and a few other places did not revolt was a very near-run thing (the first major 1857 attempt at a mutiny, in fact, took place in Bengal), and had this happened many other dominoes would have been knocked over.

There is also the fact that the British attack on Delhi in September of 1857 came VERY close to being repulsed. Indeed, when one reads the accounts of the battle, it is amazing that the British managed to pull it off. And had it failed, not only was it entirely possible that the Delhi Field Force would have ceased to exist, but many heretofore loyal sepoy units would have switched sides, and many loyal princes would have raised the banner of rebellion. British rule would have been shattered.

The problem for the mutineers was that they had no real plan for what to do if they ever succeeded in driving the British out. The rebel sepoys didn't particularly like the Emperor and treated him with great disrespect. The Hindu sepoys and Muslim sepoys were virtually at one another's throats. If the British had been driven out, the result would have been virtual anarchy.

This would have been the framework to my answer

The problems even for a Delhi successful in repulsing the British would have been the same as before - lack of leadership, lack of unified command, lack of money, lack of definite purpose, and ubiquitous bandits

Now, a victory may well solve some of these problems, simply because whoever can be seen to be responsible for the victory would massively strengthen their own position

But the rebels are still a coalition of opposites, and whilst the figure of the Mughal emperor may unite them they have wildly divergent goals. A victorious commander is going to be faced by the same sort of choices Lenin had in 1918 - especially as regards purging those TOO fanatical, in Lenin's case the sailors of Kronstadt, here the Jihadis

Money is going to remain a severe problem but the kudos from winning, and if able to consolidate a single purpose, ought to allow tax-collecting to resume, and in turn the revenues would allow bandit clearing to resume

Longer-term there are still massive problems even if the unified authority can survive and even prosper - Britain won't give in. The massacres of their civilians will need to be avenged, and Crimean War veterans number many thousands. It will be a big drain on British finances, may even cause civil unrest and incipient revolution, but I cannot see Britain resting until it has at the very least destroyed Delhi in a punitive expedition...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Making the war longer and bloodier isn't hard; ultimate success would require some systemic problems to have been corrected years before, I think.

There's no one among the rebel officers with training in logistics or strategy. Even when an Indian was promoted to Captain or Major, they weren't given the same training that white officers were - and during the rebellion that was glaringly obvious. Luck will take you so far, but systematically destroying the telegraph lines and railroads would have gone a LONG way towards handicapping the British, especially if done early, and in two years no one did so. Potentially, you don't need a great general, just an extremely enthusiastic vandal: Hobson and Nicholson stranded in the Punjab and lynched, no effective way to recruit the Pathans and Sikhs, the Gurkhas won't be enough by themselves so one of the other two Company Armies (Bombay or Madras) will have to be used and won't that be interesting...

I don't think redeploying the Regular Army is an option; it's true that there was public outrage over the Sepoys, but there was also tremendous backlash from the Crimean only a few years ago. I would expect riots in Britain if any meaningful number of Regulars was redeployed.

Early death of Zafar/Bahadur II might actually be a good way to go. If Mirza Khan (for example) had come out of the succession on top, the Delhi government might have reconstituted itself. A 79-year-old prevaricating poet is not the ideal choice for even a figurehead of revolution.

Easy to imagine the siege of Delhi getting broken at the 4-month mark. At that point, the rebels head down to Oudh/Lucknow and turn it into a meatgrinder.

Two core problems for the rebels: the jihadis make fewer demands for payment and supply and show more willingness to obey orders and maintain discipline than the typical soldiers do. A successful rebellion is going to have to rely on them, which will create problems in Lucknow and even bigger problems after success. The other is that they have to fight a two front war; the Company is capable of attacking from Bengal or from Bombay, and even if Punjab, Northwest Frontier and Kashmir become secure, finding troops to fully man both lines will be hard for the rebels (unless the Company calls up the Bombay Army and it mutinies on the scale of the Bengal one, but that's not certain...).
 

67th Tigers

Banned
So for my first AH thread I want to ask two questions( assume that they are unrelated to one another)

1. Could the Indian Rebellion of 1857 succeed?

2. If it did succeed (either through better support or major obstacles butterflied away) how long would the Indian states stay independent and would its general ramifications be?

Succeed in what? Restoring the Nawab of Oudh to power? Creating a radical Wahhabist state?

I think we need a definition of "success".
 
There's also Dost Mohammed to consider - if the British had been smashed before Delhi, then their hold on the Punjab would have wavered, and Afghanistan could have stepped in and massacred the British on their borders.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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