Journal Article

NANA SAHIB IN BRITISH CULTURE AND MEMORY

WALLACE, BRIAN

2015

Overview

The Indian Rebellion leader Nana Sahib became Victorian Britain's most hated foreign enemy for his part in the 1857 Cawnpore massacres, in which British men, women, and children were killed after having been promised safe passage away from their besieged garrison. Facts were mixed with lurid fiction in reports which drew on villainous oriental stereotypes to depict Nana. The public appetite for vengeance was thwarted, however, by his escape to Nepal and subsequent reports of his death. These reports were widely disbelieved, and fears persisted for decades that Nana was plotting a new rebellion in the mountains. He came to be seen as both a literal and symbolic threat; the arrest of suspects across the years periodically revived the memories and the atavistic fury of the Mutiny, while his example as the Victorians' archetypal barbaric native ruler shaped broader colonial attitudes. At the same time, he influenced metropolitan perceptions of empire through the popular Mutiny fictions in which he was a larger-than-life villain. Tracing Nana's changing presence in the British collective memory over generations illustrates the tensions between metropolitan and colonial ideas of empire, and suggests the degree to which an iconic enemy figure could shape perceptions of other races.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Attitudes / British culture / Children / Collective Memory / Colonialism / Colonies & territories / Death / Empires / Fiction / French literature / Great Britain / Homicide / India / Indigenous Populations / Massacres / Memories / Memory / Metropolis / Mothers / Mutiny / Nepal / Perceptions / Rebellions / Russell, William Howard (1820-1907) / Sahib, Nana / Stereotypes / Threat / United Kingdom / Vengeance / Verne, Jules (1828-1905)