Post-1857 British India saw ideological flux, not hardening racial rule.

Evidence

These repeated shifts in public perceptions of the threat posed by the Wahhabis and the appropriate government response suggest that the decades following the Rebellion of 1857 were characterized by ideological instability, rather than an irreversible hardening of racial boundaries or a coherent turn from liberal empire to authoritarian imperialism. Press coverage of the trial demonstrates that liberalism, far from disappearing, remained a potent—if chameleon-like— element of public debate. It offered a language for defending the rule of law and asserting the role of public opinion as a check on government despotism that had wide resonance across the British empire. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 173

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the standard ‘liberal empire to authoritarian imperialism’ arc familiar from histories of British India.
• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes colonial liberalism as chameleon-like and non-linear — a genuinely counterintuitive periodization that resists a one-line summary.