Dr Paul R. Brumpton (Associate Lecturer, The Open University)
William Howard Russell and the Indian Mutiny
William Howard Russell made his name reporting on the Crimean campaign for The Times. At the end 1857 his talents as a war correspondent were put to the test again when he was sent to India to cover the uprising of that year. He arrived in Calcutta in February 1858 and spent just over a year in India where he reported on the capture of Lucknow and the Oudh campaign which followed it.
His letters to The Times and the publication of his Indian diaries in 1859 provide us with a fascinating perspective on the conflict. His tone and the views he expressed on the racial antipathies that the uprising exacerbated contrasts markedly with that of the Indian press and much opinion in Britain. For him the attitudes towards Indians that he observed encapsulated everything that was wrong with British rule in India and led him to doubt whether the country could be held for long by such an alien power. Russell’s criticisms of British imperialism and the moral judgements that informed it were not unique but they were not generally held and they were hardly ever so boldly expressed in public print.
In this paper I shall examine Russell’s racial views and his observations on the interaction of races in India. More generally the paper will seek to put his views in context by considering the racial attitudes of civil and military officials and the wider public as expressed in newspapers in India and Britain. The ‘Mutiny’ was a defining moment in Anglo-Indian relations. Russell began covering the conflict when it was clear that the rebellion was going to be crushed but the defining moment served to impress upon him the ultimate folly of believing that India could be governed for the benefit of Indians so long as the British continued to maintain the superiority of their race.
