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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2015
The Indian Rebellion leader Nana Sahib became Victorian Britain's most hated foreign enemy for his part in the 1857 Cawnpore massacres, in which British men, women, and children were killed after having been promised safe passage away from their besieged garrison. Facts were mixed with lurid fiction in reports which drew on villainous oriental stereotypes to depict Nana. The public appetite for vengeance was thwarted, however, by his escape to Nepal and subsequent reports of his death. These reports were widely disbelieved, and fears persisted for decades that Nana was plotting a new rebellion in the mountains. He came to be seen as both a literal and symbolic threat; the arrest of suspects across the years periodically revived the memories and the atavistic fury of the Mutiny, while his example as the Victorians' archetypal barbaric native ruler shaped broader colonial attitudes. At the same time, he influenced metropolitan perceptions of empire through the popular Mutiny fictions in which he was a larger-than-life villain. Tracing Nana's changing presence in the British collective memory over generations illustrates the tensions between metropolitan and colonial ideas of empire, and suggests the degree to which an iconic enemy figure could shape perceptions of other races.
I am grateful to Dr David Todd for supervising the MA dissertation on which this article is based, and to both him and Dr Paul Readman for their comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank the three anonymous referees for their input. The article was prepared for publication with the help of a grant from the late Miss Isobel Thornley's Bequest to the University of London. I am obliged to the British Library, the Cambridge University Library, and the Mary Evans Picture Library for the use of images from their collections.
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