The 1857 Rebellion pushed British rule in India toward liberal retrenchment.

Evidence

Viewed from the perspective of the imperial state, the case presents an example of the ideological and political shifts which, scholars have argued, characterized colonial rule in the aftermath of the Rebellion of 1857. Historians such as Thomas Metcalf have described the decades after the Rebellion in India as a period of liberal retrenchment. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 93

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how a single uprising rewrote an empire’s governing philosophy from reform to retrenchment.