Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan

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212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1865

About the author

Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet OM, PC, was a British statesman and author. In a ministerial career stretching almost 30 years, he was most notably twice Secretary of State for Scotland under William Gladstone and the Earl of Rosebery. He broke with Gladstone over the 1886 Irish Home Rule Bill, but after modifications were made to the bill he re-joined the Liberal Party shortly afterwards. Also a writer and historian, Trevelyan published The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, his maternal uncle, in 1876.

Reviews

[Martin Koenigsberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard book for the modern reader to read. Not just because of the subject matter, the siege and massacre of an Company outpost during the Indian Mutiny/1st Indian War of Independence of 1857/58. There is the florid Victorian language to wade through with its germanic sentences with the verb at the end of the sentence coming. And the numerous racisms that drip all over this book. My personal study of the British Empire made this relatively straight forward and allowed me to keep ploughing on, I would forgive a person of south Asian descent getting tired of it quickly. But as a historical document reading both between the lines and the lines themselves, there is much to learn and think about....

[Sonal Panse · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars only because the writing is good.

Otherwise, this book displays the kind of offensively entitled, racist attitude that makes me wish yet again that the 1857 Revolt had succeeded and the British thieves had been made to depart there and then.

I'm researching the 1857 Revolt for a possible book, and the more I research, the angrier I feel.

This twitter feed has a nice record of how civilized these parasites were here in India and elsewhere -

https://twitter.com/crimesofbrits

[Miltiadis Michalopoulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is much pain and sorrow in this book, but there is also glamour and bravery and glory! The style of writing is very high and the author has the English sense of subtle irony that I like most. The book is penetrated by the Victorian spirit : a contempt for the locals and a pride for being English. But the insights are deep and the conclusions are right.

[Kenn Sheather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad but dull

This is a story of the awful happenings in Cawnpore 1857. Written years after but with the hallmarks of Victorian era. Rather a dull book in fact.