Interdisciplinary in focus, this title explores the areas of gender, colonial fiction, white marginal groups, the tribal movements, and penal laws, and associates them with the event. It presents alternatives views and expands and complicates the conceptual boundaries of the Rebellion.

The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India was much more than a 'sepoy mutiny'. It was a major event in South Asian and British colonial history that significantly challenged imperialism in India. This fascinating collection explores hitherto ignored diversities of the Great Rebellion such as gender and colonial fiction, courtesans, white 'marginals', penal laws and colonial anxieties about the Mughals, even in exile. Also studied are popular struggles involving tribals and outcastes, and the way outcastes in the south of India locate the Rebellion. Interdisciplinary in focus and based on a range of untapped source materials and rare, printed tracts, this book questions conventional wisdom. The comprehensive introduction traces the different historiographical approaches to the Great Rebellion, including the imperialist, nationalist, marxist and subaltern scholarship. While questioning typical assumptions associated with the Great Rebellion, it argues that the Rebellion neither began nor ended in 1857-58. Clearly informed by the 'Subaltern Studies' scholarship, this book is post-subalternist as it moves far beyond narrow subalternist concerns. It will be of interest to students of Colonial and South Asian History, Social History, Cultural and Political Studies.

"The chapters add a fascinating depth and variety to any examination of this important period in colonial history... Pati has succeeded in producing an edition that achieves his purpose. Not only does it expand the geographic and chronological scale of the Rebellion, but the The Great Rebellion successfully contests colonial narratives that still seem to dominate today." - Robyn Curtis, University of canterbury; New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 12, 2 (December 2010)