Kim A. Wagner

סיפור ותחקיר של הטבח המפורסם בפנג'ב שהפך לנקודת מפנה במאבקה של הודו לעצמאות מהבריטים. נקודת המבט של המחבר היא "שמאלנית" או הומניסטית באופן גלוי אך התחקיר נראה עובדתית מדויק וקפדני. הויכוח היחידי שיכול להיות הוא עם הפרשנות של האירועים. הספר מעניין מאוד בזכות עצמו וגם מעניין מנקודת המבט של הפוליטיקה הישראלית והיחס שלה לפלשתינאים ובמיוחד בנקודה שבה אנחנו נמצאים היום. . לי אישית אירוע כדוגמת אמריצר נראה לחלוטין לא בלתי אפשרי.… (mais)

The book starts with an interesting discovery: a skull with a note stuck into the eye socket of the skull.

That is the genesis of the book.

The subtitle – the life and death of a rebel – is misleading, because there is almost nothing about Alum Bheg in the book. This is not surprising, as the odds of finding any information about an obscure military person in the 19th century, are remote.

He pronounces Alum Bheg as innocent of murder, and assumes that the man was caught up in the event of the times, before being blown up by a cannon.

Much of the ground has been covered, yet it is interesting to read what Kim Wagner has written. I like that he calls it The Great Uprising, and not The Great Mutiny. The Great Uprising is better, as it does represent, to some extent, the Indian perspective.

He does cast the actions of the British in a darker light, and this is how it should be.

Sialkot has not been covered by writers of The Great Uprising and this is a good addition to the literature on the events of 1857-58.… (mais)

Starting with the discovery of a skull, and an attached note in a storage room of an English Pub, in 1963, we raders get an interesting description of how the English treated one grisly artifact, and an account of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The skull had the name of the previous owner, a sepoy of the 46th Bengal Native Infantry, attached and thus Wagner assembled a description of the rising, its causes and effects on a fairly representative British Cantonment of the period. While the illustrations are adequate, I was quite disappointed in the maps. Overall, a good account of the Mutiny, and a study of some of the human costs of the rising upon the white community. The native side has some coverage, but I would have preferred more. A good read, over all. My copy was published in the USA by the Oxford University Press in 2018.… (mais)