Place · cantonment town · India
Barrackpore
The early British East India Company military cantonment at Barrackpore 25 kilometres north of Kolkata, established in 1772 as the Bengal Army's main cantonment — the oldest British cantonment in India. On 29 March 1857 the sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry attacked his British officers Sgt-Maj Hewson and Lt Baugh on the parade ground, protesting the greased cartridges — the earliest documented sepoy uprising preceding the Meerut Mutiny of 10 May 1857 by six weeks. Pandey was hanged on 8 April 1857, five weeks before the Meerut rising; his action is often cited as the opening act of the 1857 uprising. The Barrackpore cantonment also served as the Viceroy's weekend residence (Flagstaff House) until Delhi became the capital in 1911.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 22.760, 88.370
Connections (3)
- Historical routeMeerut
Mangal Pandey attacked his officers at Barrackpore in March 1857 and was hanged; the 34th was disbanded; six weeks later the Meerut garrison rose and rode for Delhi. The two events are fifteen hundred kilometres apart and there is no organisational link between them, but both turn on the same cartridge rumour and the same accumulated grievance in an army recruited heavily from a province annexed the year before.
- Imperial administration ofKolkata: Fort William & the Maidan
Barrackpore was the Bengal Army's principal cantonment, sixteen miles up the Hooghly from Calcutta and directly under the eye of the government that ran India from Fort William. It had mutinied before — in 1824, when the 47th refused to embark for Burma and was fired on by artillery. The 1857 rumour about the cartridges started in exactly this cantonment, among men whose grievances the government beside them had had thirty years to hear.
- Site withinKolkata
Barrackpore lies within Kolkata — the two sites sit about 21 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Barrackpore is one of the specific sites that give Kolkata its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Barrackpore”. Parliamentary Papers and the Mutiny Narratives; Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt; William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal.
Open Barrackpore in the repository →