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UPPCS Modern History Gap Sheet: Revolt of 1857: Centres, Leaders, Officers.
UPPCS has asked 25 of these. 4 have not been asked yet. Lock the first list, then read the second: it holds what UPPCS has not used yet.
First, the concept
The spark was the greased cartridge of the Enfield rifle; the fuel was older: annexations (Lapse, Awadh), loss of land, and the General Service Enlistment Act 1856 that could send sepoys overseas.
Learn every centre as a triangle: place, Indian leader, British officer who crushed it. UPPCS mixes one corner of one triangle with another.
✅ Already asked (25)
Start and causes
- Barrackpore, 29 March 1857 · Mangal Pandey of the 34th Native Infantry
- Meerut, 10 May 1857 · The revolt proper began; sepoys marched to Delhi
- Greased cartridges of the Enfield rifle · The immediate cause
- Lotus and chapati · Symbols passed from village to village
Centres and leaders
- Delhi · Bahadur Shah Zafar; real command Bakht Khan; retaken by John Nicholson; Hodson captured the emperor
- Kanpur · Nana Saheb and Tantia Tope; Colin Campbell
- Lucknow · Begum Hazrat Mahal (for her son Birjis Qadr); Henry Lawrence killed; Havelock, Campbell
- Jhansi and Gwalior · Rani Lakshmibai; Hugh Rose; she died fighting near Gwalior, June 1858
- Jagdishpur (Bihar) · Kunwar Singh, aged about 80; William Taylor and Vincent Eyre
- Bareilly · Khan Bahadur Khan
- Faizabad · Maulvi Ahmadullah
- Allahabad · Maulvi Liaqat Ali; General Neill
- Assam · Maniram Dewan
- Sambalpur (Odisha) · Surendra Sai
- Rajasthan (Awa, Kota) · Thakur Kushal Singh of Awa; Jaidayal and Mehrab Khan at Kota
- Mandsaur · Firoz Shah, a Mughal prince
- Gonda and Bahraich · Raja Devi Bakhsh Singh
How historians named it
- 'First War of Independence' · V. D. Savarkar (1909)
- 'Neither first, nor national, nor a war of independence' · R. C. Majumdar
- 'A national rising' · Benjamin Disraeli
- 'A sepoy mutiny' · John Lawrence, John Seeley
- 'Eighteen Fifty-Seven' · S. N. Sen; the government's centenary history
After the revolt
- Government of India Act 1858 · Company rule ended; Secretary of State for India; Viceroy
- Queen's Proclamation, 1 November 1858 · Read by Canning at Allahabad; no more annexations
- Bahadur Shah exiled to Rangoon · Died there in 1862
❌ Not asked yet (4)
Items marked 'asked in other exams' have come in UPSC or other state exams, not yet in UPPCS.
🔒 4 items not asked yet
Start and causes: 1 · Centres and leaders: 2 · After the revolt: 1
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⚠️ The revolt began at Meerut on 10 May; Mangal Pandey's act at Barrackpore (29 March) came first but stayed local. Begum Hazrat Mahal led Lucknow, not Delhi. Hugh Rose fought Lakshmibai; Colin Campbell retook Kanpur and Lucknow.
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