When People Rebel 1857 and After Test - 5

Deurbanization is a process whereby people move from urban areas to rural areas. More and more people begin to leave the city due to decline of big cities and due to other political reasons. In, India, during industrialisation there was an increase in machine made goods which led to decay of rural and urban handicraft production which eventually led to movement of people from urban to rural areas.

The ideas of liberty and democratic rights were the most important legacy of the French Revolution. These spread from France to the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century, where feudal systems were abolished. Colonized people reworked the idea of freedom from bondage into their movements to create a sovereign nation-state. Tipu Sultan and Rammohan Roy are two examples of individuals who responded to the ideas coming from revolutionary France.

• Defeat of Sirajuddaulah- Establishment of English East India Company rule in India
• Defeat of Prithviraj Chouhan- Establishment of Delhi Sultanate in India
• Defeat of Ibrahim Lodi- Establishment of Mughal empire in India
• 1857 revolt- Transfer of power from company to crown

Manikarnika was born into a Maratha family at Varanasi. She was married to Raja Gangadhar Rao, the Maharaja of Jhansi in 1842, and became the Rani of Jhansi. After her marriage Manikarnika became Lakshmibai, so named in honour of the goddess Lakshmi. Before her marriage, she was known as Chabeeli because of her jolly ways. In 1851, Rani Lakshmibai had a son, Damodar Rao. He died at the age of about four months. On the day before the raja's death in November 1853, he adopted a son. His name was Anand, but was renamed Damodar, after their actual son. The raja wrote a letter to the British government of India requesting that his widow should be recognised as the ruler of Jhansi after his death during her lifetime. After the death of her husband the head of the British government of India, Lord Dalhousie, refused to allow her adopted son to become raja and Jhansi was then ruled by the British.

Mirza Abu Zafar Sirajuddin Muhammad Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last Mughal emperor. He was the second son of and became the successor to his father, Akbar II with his death on 28 September 1837. He used Zafar, (translation: victory) a part of his name, for his nom de plume (takhallus) as an Urdu poet, and wrote many Urdu ghazals. He was a nominal Emperor, as the Mughal Empire existed in name only and his authority was limited only to the city of Delhi(Shahjahanbad). Following his involvement in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British exiled him to Rangoon in British-controlled Burma, after convicting him on conspiracy charges in a kangaroo court.

In India, the term First War of Independence was first popularized by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his 1909 book "The History of the War of Indian Independence", which was originally written in Marathi. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, insisted on using the term First War of Independence to refer to the event, and the terminology was adopted by the Government of India. 

Lord Canning the governor-general of East India Company brought the General Service Enlistment Act, 1856. Under this Act Indian soldiers could be sent overseas on duty. The Act did not take into account the sentiment of the Indian soldiers.

Agriculture India was made an economic colony to serve the interests of industrial England. India was forced to export, at cheaper rates, raw materials like raw cotton and raw silk that the British industries needed urgently,
Plantation products and food grains which were in short supply in Britain

Jhansi was a Maratha-ruled princely state in Bundelkhand. When the Raja of Jhansi died without a biological male heir in 1853, it was annexed to the British Raj by the Governor-General of India under the doctrine of lapse. His widow, Rani Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi protested against the denial of rights of their adopted son. When war broke out, Jhansi quickly became a center of the rebellion.