Though the two great princes of Central India, Sindhia and Holkar, wisely and fortunately remained true to the British, troops belonging to both of them joined the mutineers. The Gwalior contingent of Sindhia’s army mutinied in The Central India Campaign. the middle of June, and on the 1st of July Holkar’s troops revolted at Indore, and the resident, Henry Durand, was forced to leave the residency. The rani of Jhansi also rose in rebellion, to become known as “the best man upon the side of the enemy.” The rising in this quarter received little attention until January 1858, when Sir Hugh Rose was given the command of two brigades, to act in concert with Sir Colin Campbell, and he immediately began a campaign which for celerity and effectiveness has rarely been equalled in India. His principle was to go straight for the enemy wherever he found him, and pursue him until he had exterminated him. He was hampered by none of that exaggerated respect for the rebels which earned Sir Colin Campbell the nickname of Old Khabardhar (Old Take-Care); but carried to an extreme the policy of audacity. Advancing from Bombay Sir Hugh Rose relieved Saugor on the 3rd of February, after it had been invested by the rebels for upwards of seven months. On the 3rd of March he forced the pass of Madanpur, and took the whole of the enemy’s defences in rear, throwing them into panic. On the 21st he began the siege of Jhansi, the stronghold of the mutineers in Central India, with a garrison of 11,000 men. During the course of the siege Tantia Topi, the most capable native leader of the Mutiny, arrived with a fresh force of 20,000 men, and threatened the British camp; but Sir Hugh Rose, with a boldness which only success could justify, divided his force, and while still maintaining the siege of the fort, attacked Tantia Topi with only 1500 men and completely routed him. This victory was won on the 1st of April, and two days later Sir Hugh carried Jhansi by assault. On the 1st of May the battle of Kunch was fought and won in a temperature of 110° in the shade, many of the combatants on both sides being struck down by heat apoplexy. On the 22nd of May the battle of Kalpi was won, though the European troops were hampered by defective ammunition and Sir Hugh himself here received his fifth sunstroke. In five months he had beaten the enemy in thirteen general actions and sieges, and had captured some of the strongest forts in India. News now arrived that the rebel army under Tantia Topi and the rani of Jhansi had attacked Sindhia, whose troops had gone over to the rebels and delivered Gwalior into their hands. Sir Hugh marched against Gwalior at once, captured the Morar cantonments on the 16th of June, and carried the whole of the Gwalior positions by assault on the 19th, thus restoring his state to Sindhia within ten days of taking the field. This was the crowning stroke of the Central India campaign, and practically put an end to the Mutiny, though the work of stamping out its embers went on for many months, and was only completed with the capture and execution of Tantia Topi in April 1859.
The Indian Mutiny was in no sense a national rising. The great mass of the people in the affected districts either stood neutral, waiting with the immemorial patience of the East to accept the yoke of the conqueror, or helped the Not a national rising. British troops with food and service, in many cases also sheltering British fugitives to the best of their ability. The attempt to throw off the British yoke was confined to a few disaffected ex-rulers and their heirs, with their numerous clansmen and hangers-on, besides the badmashes and highwaymen who saw their way to profit by the removal of the British administration under which their peculiar talents found no safe outlet. The Bengal native army was their tool, which circumstances put into their hands at the psychological moment when British power seemed to be at its lowest point. But the fighting races of the Punjab saw no reason for casting in their lot with the mutineers, and the great majority of the independent princes who had nothing of which to complain, like Patiala in the Punjab, Holkar and Sindhia in central India, preserved a loyal or at least an interested friendship. The Sikhs showed their appreciation of Lawrence’s admirable administration by keeping faith with their recent conquerors, and the Gurkhas of Nepal did yeoman service for their fathers’ enemies. The lack of any central principle or common interest was shown in the divided counsels and sporadic action of the mutineers and their allies, which made them an easy prey to the solid and audacious British forces.
The chief result of the Indian Mutiny was to end the government of India by the East India company. It was felt that a system of administration which could permit such a catastrophe was no longer desirable. On the 2nd of The result of the Mutiny. August 1858 the queen signed the act which transferred the government of India to the crown. On the 1st of November Lord Canning, now viceroy of India, published the noble proclamation in which the change was announced, and a full amnesty was offered to all the rebels who had not been leaders in the revolt or were not guilty of the murder of British subjects. Even before the fall of Delhi, Canning had been adversely criticized—“Clemency Canning” he was scornfully called—for announcing his intention to discriminate between the guilt of various classes of mutineers. But a wiser view soon prevailed, and the natives of India at large gratefully accepted the queen’s proclamation as the charter of their lives and liberties.
See G. W. Forrest, History of the Indian Mutiny (1904), and Selections from State Papers (1897); T. R. E. Holmes, History of the Indian Mutiny (1898); Kaye and Malleson’s History of the Indian Mutiny (1864-1888); R. S. Rait, Life of Lord Gough (1903); Sir W. Lee-Warner, Life of Lord Dalhousie (1904); Sir H. Cunningham, Lord Canning (“Rulers of India” series), (1890); Sir Owen Tudor Burne, Clyde and Strathnairn (1895); Lord Roberts, Forty-One Years in India (1898); and Sir Evelyn Wood’s articles in The Times in the autumn of 1907.
INDIAN OCEAN, the ocean bounded N. by India and Persia; W. by Arabia and Africa, and the meridian passing southwards from Cape Agulhas; and E. by Farther India, the Sunda Islands, West and South Australia, and the meridian passing through South Cape in Tasmania. As in the case of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the southern boundary is taken at either 40° S., the line of separation from the great Southern Ocean, or, if the belt of this ocean between the two meridians named be included, at the Antarctic Circle. It attains its greatest breadth, more than 6000 m. between the south points of Africa and Australia, and becomes steadily narrower towards the north, until it is divided by the Indian peninsula into two arms, the Arabian Sea on the west and the Bay of Bengal on the east. Both branches meet the coast of Asia almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, but the Arabian Sea communicates with the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf by the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and Ormuz respectively. Both of these, again, extend in a north-westerly direction to 30° N. Murray gives the total area, reckoning to 40° S. and including the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, as 17,320,550 English square miles, equivalent to 13,042,000 geographical square miles. Karstens gives the area as 48,182,413 square kilometres, or 14,001,000 geographical square miles; of these 10,842,000 square kilometres, or 3,150,000 geographical square miles, about 22% of the whole, lie north of the equator. For the area from 40° S. to the Antarctic Circle, Murray gives 9,372,600 English square miles, equivalent to 7,057,568 geographical square miles, and Karstens 24,718,000 square kilometres, equivalent to 7,182,474 geographical square miles. The Indian Ocean receives few large rivers, the chief being the Zambezi, the Shat-el-Arab, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Irawadi. Murray estimates the total land area draining to the Indian Ocean at 5,050,000 geographical square miles, almost the same as that draining to the Pacific. The annual rainfall draining from this area is estimated at 4380 cubic miles.
Relief.—Large portions of the bed still remain unexplored, but a fair knowledge of its general form has been gained from the soundings of H.M.S. “Challenger,” the German “Gazelle” Expedition, and various cable ships, and in 1898 information was greatly added to by the German “Valdivia” Expedition. A ridge, less than 2000 fathoms from the surface, extends south-eastwards from the Cape. This ridge, on which the Crozet Islands and Kerguelen are situated, is directly connected with the submarine plateau of the Antarctic. From it the depth increases north-eastwards, and the greatest depression is found in the angle between Australia and the Sunda Islands, where “Wharton deep,” below the 3000-fathom line, covers an area of nearly 50,000 sq. m. Immediately to the north of Wharton deep is the smaller “Maclear deep,” and the long narrow “Jeffreys deep” off the south of Australia completes the list of depressions below 3000 fathoms in the Indian Ocean. The 2000-fathom line approaches close to the coast except (1) in the Bay of Bengal, which it does not enter; (2) to the south-west of India along a ridge on which are the Laccadive and Maldive Islands; and (3) in the Mozambique Channel, and on a bank north and east of Madagascar, on which are the Seychelles, Mascarene Islands and other groups.
Islands.—Like the Pacific, the Indian Ocean contains more islands in the western than in the eastern half. Towards the centre, the Maldive, Chagos and Cocos groups are of characteristic coral formation, and coral reefs occur on most parts of the tropical coasts. There are many volcanic islands, as Mauritius, the Crozet Islands, and St Paul’s. The chief continental islands are Madagascar, Sokotra and Ceylon. Kerguelen, a desolate and uninhabited island near the centre of the Indian Ocean at its southern border, is noteworthy as providing a base station for Antarctic exploration.
Deposits.—The bottom of the Bay of Bengal, of the northern part of the Arabian Sea, of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and of the narrow coastal strips on the east and west sides of the ocean, are chiefly covered by blue and green muds. Off the African coasts there are large deposits of Glauconitic sands and muds at depths down to 1000 fathoms, and on banks where coral formation occurs there are large deposits of coral muds and sands. In the deeper parts the bed of the ocean is covered on the west and south by Globigerina ooze except for an elongated patch of red clay extending most of the distance from Sokotra to the Maldives. The red clay covers a nearly square area in the eastern part of the basin bounded on two sides by the Sunda Islands and the west coast of Australia, as well as two strips extending east and west from the southern margin of the square along the south of Australia and nearly to Madagascar. In the northern portion of the square, north and east of Wharton deep, the red clay is replaced over a large tract by Radiolarian ooze.
Temperature.—The mean temperature of the surface water is over 80° F. in all parts north of 13° S., except in the north-west of the Arabian Sea, where it is somewhat lower. South of 13° S. temperature falls uniformly and quickly to the Southern Ocean. Between the depths of 100 and 1000 fathoms temperature is high in the north-west, and in the south centre and south-west, and low in the north-east, the type of distribution remaining substantially the same. At 1500 fathoms temperature has become very uniform, ranging between 35° and 37° F., but still exhibiting the same type of distribution, though in a very degenerate form.