Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to the History in the Oak National Academy.

My name is Mr. Ascot, and hopefully you recognise me, cause this is our third lesson of four, looking into our inquiry, the British Empire in India.

Now, if you don't recognise me, that's probably because you haven't done the first two lessons and it's really important to you learn first.

If you have not, this lesson won't make much sense.

So go back and do them, but first, and then if you've done them brilliant, you have a go at this lesson.

So today's title is British Reactions to 1857.

If you remember, we've got this difficult sounding inquiry question, why does it matter what we call the 1857 conflict in India? We're going to find out more about how we can answer that question today.

So I can ask you to get a piece of paper and a pen.

Clear away any possible distractions and start by writing down today's title, and once you do that, I'll get my head out the way.

So, British reactions to 1857.

We're going to start with a true or false exercise to help us recap the story so far.

So what I want you to do, is in the margin of your piece of paper, write down the letters A to D and then next to each one, I want you either write true or false.

So I'm going to ask you to pause the video now as you read through these to work out whether these statements are true or false.

When you unpause the video, we'll go through the answers.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's go through the answers.

So for A, well done if you put true.

It was true that rumours about animal fat used to grease rifles, worried some sepoys.

For B, well done if you put false.

It's not true that during 1857 all sepoys mutinied against their British officers.

It was only some sepoys that did mutiny.

For C, well done if you put false.

It's not true that Lakshmibai, Queen of Jhansi helped the British regain control.

In fact, Lakshmibai fought against the British, and she declared Jhansi independent of Britain.

And for D, well done if you put true.

It is the case that the British regained control by using extreme violence.

So this timeline gives us an overview of the period that we've been looking at so far.

At 1857, the conflict we're studying is shown in the orange flash.

Now, as we know, after the conflict, the British government took control of India itself and beforehand the East India Company was in control of India.

So today what we're going to be doing is we're going to be looking at how people in Britain reacted to the conflict.

Now to remind ourselves, last lesson we considered two different names that could be used to describe the 1857 conflict.

The Sepoy Mutiny and the Indian Uprising.

And these two names give us a bit of an idea about trying to answer our inquiry question.

Why does it matter what we call the 1857 conflict? Now, each of these names implies slightly different things about that conflict.

So if we say the Sepoy Mutiny, then we're implying that the conflict had a military cause, is about sepoys refusing to follow the orders of their officers.

We're also implying that the mutiny focused on the armed forces.

So many a fight between sepoys and the British armed forces implies the rebellion was limited.

There wasn't a huge number of people that participated.

And it also implies that the sepoys, so the Indian soldiers that fought in the Bush army and then rebelled we're in the wrong.

The word Mutiny implies that those that they are rebelling against were a justified authority, or they were in the right.

So that implies this name Sepoy Mutiny implies that the sepoys were in the wrong in some way by starting this conflict.

If however, we use the word Indian Uprising, then we might be suggesting that the cause of the conflict was bigger than just the military.

Maybe it was a cultural cause.

The word Indian Uprising also implies that ordinary people were involved, and implies that it was a large scale rebellion.

It wasn't just a small number of people involved, lots of people were involved.

Now, this map shows the British empire in the 1850s.

All the bits that are shaded in pink were officially owned by British colonies part of the British empire.

I've circled in blue the part of the map which shows the British Isles and I've circled India in green.

And as you can see from this map, India and Britain quite far away.

In fact, in the 1850s, there was no telephones and no internet.

And so it took a long time to get a message between India and Britain.

And when the 1857 conflict broke out in India, it took six weeks for the news to get to Britain.

Now at the time, the British government was led by a man called Lord Palmerston.

You can see him here, and he's giving a speech in the British parliament.

You might have heard of parliament before.

And parliament was the group of people who made sure that government was ruling well.

Now Palmerston was a well respected man in parliament.

He was known for increasing British power and defending the British empire.

And when Palmerston first spoke about the conflict in India, he probably thought carefully about what he was going to call it.

And the word he decided to use was he called it the Sepoy Mutiny.

Now, by using this word, he implied that the conflict was not a big deal and shouldn't worry the members of parliament.

And by calling it the Sepoy Mutiny, Palmerston made it seem that the conflict was small scale and just involved some soldiers who were disobeying orders.

Now Palmerston did this because he didn't want it to seem like his government was not in control of the situation.

He wanted to make it seem like he was there in the government and therefore they were in charge of what they were doing.

Right, let's check our understanding.

So what does calling the conflict the Sepoy Mutiny imply? This is the phrase that Palmerston used, the leader of the British government.

So what does calling the conflict the Sepoy Mutiny imply? I'm going to give you 30 seconds to pause the video, read through the answers and then unpause it when you're done.

Okay, welcome back.

Well done if you chose option two.

So by calling it the Sepoy Mutiny, Palmerston was implying the conflict was limited to the actions of some soldiers.

Now, although Palmerston was well respected in parliament, there was some politicians who were critical of Palmerston's government.

And one of these politicians who was critical was called Benjamin Disraeli.

And you can see Disraeli in this picture giving a speech in parliament.

Now, Disraeli was a very talented speaker and he could be very funny in the things that he said.

And he used his speeches in parliament to criticise the government and to criticise how Palmerston was ruling the country.

Now, Disraeli did this because he did not support Palmerston's government, and he wanted one of his allies, which means kind of one of his friends or one of the people we worked closely with to lead the government instead.

So Disraeli wanted Palmerston to stop leading the government.

And he wanted one of his allies to take over the government instead.

So, how did Disraeli criticise the government? Well, he said first of all, that the East India Company had ruled India badly and therefore implied that it was the British government's fault that it had allowed the East India Company to rule India badly.

He also said that the uprising was bigger than a mutiny, and he was implying that again, the British government was responsible because it hadn't seen that there was going to be an uprising.

And he said that it was going to be difficult for the British army to regain control of India.

Now as a result, Disraeli used a different name from Palmerston to describe the conflict in India.

Disraeli called it the Indian Uprising.

And by using this name, he was implying that the conflict was bigger than a mutiny.

By using this name, Disraeli also made Palmerston's government look like it was not in control of the situation.

I'm going to ask you now to take another look at this diagram, because shortly I'm going to remove some of the key words to see how well you can remember the diagram.

So you might want to pause the video briefly now where you just reread it one more time, then unpause it when you're confident, you should be able to remember some of the key words.

Okay, let's see how well you've remembered it.

So, there's four gaps.

I want you to try to have a go at writing down what you think the words are for those four gaps.

I say you might pause video one again and unpause it when you think you've got four answers.

If you're not sure, don't worry, we'll go through the answers shortly.

Okay, let's find out what was in these gaps.

So for the first one, well done if you put the East India Company.

The second one, well done if you wrote mutiny.

For the third one, well done if you put control.

And for the fourth one, well done if you put uprising.

That's a really important one because the Indian Uprising is what Disraeli called the conflict in India in order to criticise Palmerston's government.

So, was Disraeli right to call the conflict in India Uprising? In one sense, yes.

The conflict wasn't just about sepoys refusing to obey orders.

It was actually about much bigger things than just the Enfield rifles.

Now, as we saw the story of Lakshmibai from the last lesson, the conflict was not limited to soldiers.

Lakshmibai was a queen and she led her people in conflict against the British.

And if you remember this picture on the right, shows her as she's armed and ready to fight the British.

However, there's also some evidence that Disraeli was not right.

There's some evidence suggesting Disraeli was wrong to call the conflict in India Uprising.

Now this map on the right shows India and the different colours show the different States of India between 1857 and 1858 and what they were doing.

Now, Disraeli said that the conflict in India was a national uprising or Indian uprising, but this map paint a slightly different picture.

Now, the very dark blue parts of the map.

So you can see one up here, where my mouse is, another one here, another one here, another one here.

These were the parts of India that were actually in rebellion against Britain.

These are the parts of India which said, "We do not want Britain to rule anymore.

"We want to get rid of the East India Company "and we want to become independent." Now, compared to the whole of India, those small dark blue bits are actually quite small.

Now, if we look at the light blue States, so up here, here, here, here, down here, these are states that actually supported Britain and they provided troops in order to fight with British against the states that were in rebellion.

Now the green states show states that were neutral and some of the kind of middle shade blue ones, they're ones where the state was supportive of Britain, but there were some troops in those places that support the rebels.

Now, what's the message we get from this map? It's quite complicated, but one of the key messages is that the uprising, if that's the word we want to use, wasn't spread across the whole country.

So it becomes misleading or inaccurate to describe it as a national uprising or an Indian uprising because not everyone in India participates in it.

However, it might be the case that Disraeli didn't actually care about whether the phrase, the Indian uprising was accurate or not.

Maybe he cared about something else.

So I'm going to introduce you to a new word.

I think it's really important to, because this word, I think really helped us understand what might be going on.

And the word is this, ulterior motive.

And ulterior motive means an alternative and often concealed reason for action.

So an ulterior motive is not the thing that you publicly say is the reason why you're going to behave in some way.

But some of you might keep a bit secret.

So I can ask you to pause the video now, copy this down and then unpause it once you've copied it into your notes.

All right, welcome back.

Let's see if we can get a slight better understanding of this new word ulterior motive.

So let's think about whether the name given to the conflict might reveal something about Palmerston and Disraeli's ulterior motives.

So the secret reasons they might've had for why they acted.

Now Palmerston, as the head of the government, he called the conflict the Sepoy Mutiny, whereas Disraeli, who was a member of parliament, but was critical of the government.

He called it the Indian Uprising.

So let's have a bit of a guess about what Palmerston's ulterior motives might've been.

So Palmerston wanted to make the government look good and he wanted to make the British empire look powerful.

Let's have a think about what Disraeli's ulterior motives must've been.

So Disraeli wanted to make the government look bad and Disraeli wanted to end the East India Company's rule of India.

Right, let's just recap this to make it really clear.

So an ulterior motive is an alternative and often concealed reason for action.

Now, what I want you to have a go at doing is trying to finishing off these sentences that I've written out.

So I've written out a start sentence to describe Palmerston's ulterior motive and Disraeli's ulterior motives.

And I want you to have a go, see if you can finish those sentences off in your notes.

So you've got two options here.

Either you can pause the video now and have a go at finishing them off, or if you're not sure, you can let the video keep playing for a bit and then I'll give you a bit of a clue.

So pause it now if you think you've finished this now, if not, let the video pause, roll on.

Okay, so if you let the video keep playing, I've now put some suggested endings for sentences, but they be in the wrong place.

They might be jumbled up or they might be in the right place.

So I'm going to ask you to pause the video now, read through the sentence starters and sentence endings, and try to write out what you think is the correct full sentence for Palmerston and the correct full sentence for Disraeli.

So please pause the video now, once you do that.

Right, welcome back.

Let's see what I've put as an answer.

So they were jumbled up.

So I've put as a full sentence.

Palmerston's ulterior motive for calling the 1857 conflict the Sepoy Mutiny was to make the government look like it was in control.

And for Disraeli I've written, Disraeli's ulterior motive for calling the 1857 conflict The Indian Uprising was to make the government look weak and like it needed to change.

Whether or not Disraeli was accurate in how he described the conflict, what he managed to do had an effect, it worked.

And more and more people start putting pressure on Lord Palmerston and his government.

Now, the British Monarch Queen Victoria, who we can see here on the right didn't normally get involved in British politics.

She had allowed her prime minister, the person who's head of the government and parliament to rule the country.

However, she was so concerned about what was happening in India, she wrote a letter to Lord Palmerston, and this is an extract from that letter here.

So I'm going to ask you to, I'll read through it with you now so we can see her concern.

"The Queen has just received "Lord Palmerston's letter of yesterday "and must say that if she had been in the house, "she would have joined him saying "that the government were not doing enough "to reorganise a defensive force." To remember that was that there was a problem and that Palmerston was not taking control of it.

So he's had pressure coming on.

He had pressure on him coming from Queen Victoria, the monarch of Britain.

And to make things even worse for Palmerston, news from India made the conflict seem like it was much bigger than a mutiny.

Now the key thing that the key bit of music kept coming with that news of massacres reach Britain.

So massacres are the events where lots of people are killed at once.

And often, these stories describe rebel sepoys killing British women and children.

And this picture on the right shows the kind of scene that the Britons we're reading about in their newspapers.

If you look carefully at the pictures, you can see a rebel sepoy on horseback or two rebel sepoys on horseback killing British women in a river.

So all of this would put more and more pressure on Palmerston.

Eventually though, the British did manage to beat the rebel sepoys and took back control of India.

And so eventually there was a British victory.

Now this was good news for Palmerston.

Britain had been able to hold on to India, but Disraeli succeeded in ending the East India Company's rule of India.

So from 1858 onwards, Britain ruled India directly and East India Company stopped having a role in ruling India.

However, even though Disraeli was successful in stopping the East India Company rule in India, the word he used was not the one that stuck.

So after 1858, the word Mutiny stuck as the one that people in Britain used to describe what happened.

So when Britons wrote about or talked about the conflict of 1857, 1958, they continue to refer to it as a mutiny.

So perhaps this is because it allowed Britons to imagine that most Indians supported the idea of India being part of the British empire.

Right, we're now in a really good position to have a go at trying to answer these comprehension questions.

So what's going to happen is shortly I'm going to ask you to pause the video, go to the next page, read through the worksheet slides.

Have a go answering the comprehension questions, then coming back to the video and we'll go through the answers.

To help you, first of all, I'm going to read through the questions to make sure they're as clear as possible.

So question one, how long did it take for news of the conflict in India to reach Britain? Question two, what did Palmerston call the 1857 conflict in India? Question three, who received the title, Empress of India? Question four, why did many British people in the 19th century continue to call the 1857 conflict a mutiny? And the challenge question is a bit harder.

What do you think was Disraeli's ulterior motive for saying the East India Company had misruled India? Now remember, the best answers will be in full sentences which add a bit of extra detail.

So, I'm going to ask you now to please pause the video and have a go reading through this worksheet slides, answer the questions and then come back to video when you're done.

Welcome back.

Let's go through the answers.

So question one, how long did it take for the news of the conflict in India to reach Britain? An acceptable answer was correct, six weeks, but a good answer that was in a full sentence is that it took six weeks for news of the conflict in India to reach Britain.

Now, for this question or any of the later questions, if you get something wrong or you think there's an extra detail you want to add, just pause the video and copy out my good answer into your notes.

We won't have exactly the same wording, but if we've got similar things we've said, you can just give yourself a tick because you may well have got it right.

Okay, question two.

What did Palmerston call the 1857 conflict in India? An acceptable answer, the Sepoy Mutiny.

A good answer and a set of full sentences is Palmerston called the 1857 conflict in India the Sepoy Mutiny.

He called it the Sepoy Mutiny because he was in charge of the government and wanted to make the conflict seem small scale.

Question three, who received the title Empress of India? An acceptable answer, Queen Victoria.

A good answer in the full sentence, Queen Victoria received the title Empress of India.

Question four, why does many British people in the 19th century continue to call the 1857 conflict a mutiny? An acceptable answer, made the British empire sound better.

A good answer in some full sentences, many British people in the 19th century continued to call the 1857 conflict a mutiny.

By using the word mutiny, it gave the impression that the conflict was not a fight against British rule.

This allowed Britons to think most Indians were happy being part of the British empire.

And question five, the challenge question, which is a bit hard, and you've got to think a bit more for it.

What do you think was Disraeli's ulterior motive for saying the East India Company had misruled India? An acceptable answer or acceptable answers, wanted to end East India Company rule of India.

Wanted to make Palmerston's government look bad.

Now, a good answer, which puts that into a full sentence or set of full sentences, Disraeli made speeches which criticised how the East India company was ruling India.

He might've made these criticisms because Disraeli believed the East India Company should no longer rule India, and instead, the British government should take over.

Disraeli may have had another motive to make Palmerston's government look bad so that someone from Disraeli's party could lead the government.

Okay, really well done for your hard work there, it's a bit confusing in thinking about all the events in India, and then also thinking about how people in Britain reacted to them.

So really well done for having a go at answering these comprehension questions.

Now, if you still got time, it'd be really good if you had to go at this extension activity, cause it's going to make you think about this even more.

An extension activity is why did Palmerston's government refer to the 1857 conflict as a mutiny? Now I'll not support you having to go and answer that question.

I'm going to ask you to read through these bullet points on the screen and then have a think yourselves about which ones are relevant to this question.

So which ones could help you answer this question.

Now, if you think they're relevant, then I want you to watch the video pause to copy them out on your piece of paper, and then we'll go through the ones which are relevant afterwards.

So I'm going to ask you now to pause the video and copy out all the ones you think are relevant.

Welcome back, let's see what you put.

So in green and in bold are the ones I think are definitely relevant.

So Palmerston wants to give the impression the government was in control of the situation and the government believed the conflict could be ended quickly because the British soldiers could easily beat the sepoys.

So both of those bullet points explain why the conflict was called a mutiny.

Now the one on the top I think could also be relevant, but it's not quite as obvious, why? So it took six weeks for news to travel from India to Britain.

And this meant that maybe Palmerston just didn't know what was happening in India.

And so he had to call it the mutiny before he had the full picture, before he had all the details and maybe once he called it the mutiny once, his government wants to stick with that phrase.

So you could have copied that on to your notes and that could be a bit relevant.

Right, I now want you to have a go at trying to answer this question.

Why did Palmerston's government refer to the 1857 conflict as a mutiny? Now for some sentence starters to help you, and I've also put some key words, which you might want to put into your sentences to make them really, really good.

So have a go and try and do this.

Pause the video while you're doing it, to try to write a couple of paragraphs trying to fully explain why did Palmerston's government refer to the 1857 conflict as a mutiny? Okay, well done for your really hard work today and having a real hard, think about why we got different names for the 1857 conflict.

What I'm going to ask you to do now is stop the video and then have a go with the final quiz.

Then you've done for today's lesson, well done.