A WELCOME STUDY 151 their OWL hands. The rebels forced her to join their side, threatening to kill her and set her palace on fire if she refused. One of the strengths of the book under review lies in the section on the Revolt in the countryside. Indeed, the participation of the peasants is an important, if neglected, aspect of the Revolt. Roy believes that in the Revolt the peasants and the zamindars fought together: "No one led, but all rose together; leaders*, 'followers', 'zamindars', 'peasants' as substantive categories dissolved in the actions of rural dissent in 1857". (p.247) I find this too simplistic. If the Revolt brought a conjuncture of forces in which social categories of oppression disappeared, one would like more evidence than is offered by Roy' s otherwise excellent study. The purpose of history is not well-served by such methodological regression. That aside, this is a welcome study, and m^kes a definite contribution in the study of colonial history. The bibliography is fairly detailed. The printing is excellent. NOTES 1. Charles Bell, The History of the Indian Mutiny — Giving a Detailed Account of the Sepoy Insurrection in India, and a Concise History of the Great Military Events ivhich have Tended to Consolidate British Empire in Hindus tan (London and New York, 1858-59), '2 vols; John W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India (London, 1867); T. R. Holmes, A History of the Indian Mutiny and the Disturbances which Accompanied it Among the Civil Population (London, 1898). 2. V.D. Savarkar, The Volcano or The First War of Indian Independence (Kuala Lumpur, n.d.) 3. S.N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven .(Delhi, 1957), p.417. 4. R.C. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857 (Calcutta, 1957); Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, 4 vols. (New Delhi, 1961-72),vol,2. 5. Initially, Eric Stokes was tempted to untangle the local specificities of the revolt in terms of caste categories, or what he described as the 'great regional unities of caste'. [See Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj —Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India. (London, 1978)]. In his later writings, however, he came to firmly reject caste as a unit of analysis for studying the revolt, for his own empirical findings revealed to him that, 'within these larger caste categories there emerged a bewildering absence of consistency of response when the uprising is viewed at large*. (See Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C.A. Bayly (Oxford, 1986). Also see Chris A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazars-North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1983). * «»,