seignet posted:Gilbakka posted:A fair number of ex-sepoys were assigned to sugar plantations on the Essequibo Coast and islands. My understanding before reading the article above was that they ran away from penalties for rebelling against their superiors in the British Indian Army in 1857. Now I know that some of the Sepoy mutineers were actually deported from India.
The British hanged them all just as an example to any further insurrections. Saw a documentary on that where an Englishman interviewed some Indian historians and families of some who were hanged. That Sepoy insurrection has significance to the Indian quest for independence along with Bengal/Calcutta movement. Indians, claim its independence came 100 years after Mangal's efforts in the mutiny.
Karl Marx called the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion the "first Indian war for independence." Michael Forde Bookshop used to sell a book of the same name containing a slew of articles that Marx had written while the rebellion was going on. They were originally published in a New York newspaper that had retained Marx as a foreign correspondent.