In May 1857, the mutiny of Indian soldiers against their British commanders at Meerut triggered a wave of revolts and rebellions throughout north and central India against British rule. These events, and the British responses to them, formed the conflict known to Westerners as the Indian Mutiny. In this conflict, the rebels had disparate and often competing objectives, such as the restoration of regional leaders and vengeance against the British, while the British themselves, with a force of predominantly Indian troops, sought to punish the rebels and reassert their control over India. Ultimately, the British were triumphant for three main reasons. First, the rebellion was not a national or nationalist revolt, but primarily limited to particular geographical areas and social groups in response to specific grievances. Second, the forces of the British had a unified purpose and a clear objective, in contrast to the rebels who struggled to attain common strategies and goals. Finally, the British enjoyed several important material advantages – logistical and military - over the rebels which allowed them to reestablish the British Raj in India. .
The character of the Indian Mutiny itself provides one of the primary explanations for the failure of the rebellion in 1857. Indeed, the Indian Mutiny was not a simple case of conqueror against conquered, but a multifaceted conflict that incorporated the general Indian grievance of British arrogance with the specific grievances of particular social groups, such as the sepoys and regional princes, who resented their sudden loss of status and power. Thus, when the rebellion first broke out in Meerut, it affected different parts of Indian society in different ways. Arguably, the most affected were the sepoys within the Bengal Army, as many troops felt that British regulations and indifference undermined their caste privileges, while over 200,000 soldiers were suddenly unemployed after the annexation of Awadh in 1856.
