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Books

The Second Anglo-Sikh War:
A New Account By
Amarpal Singh

MARTYN CHORLTON, et al

 

 

 






THE SECOND ANGLO-SIKH WAR by Amarpal Singh, Foreword by Field Marshal Sir John Chapple. Amberley Publishing, United Kingdom, 2017. Softback, pp 514, £20. ISBN: 978-1-4456-7113-0.



The second Anglo-Sikh War was sparked when a civil servant and an officer of the Bombay European Regiment were killed at Multan, Punjab, on April 19, 1848.

Sikhs rose against resulting British excesses, giving the latter an excuse to go to war, pitting the Sikh Empire against the British East India Company. The British had waited long for the death of the Lion of Punjab, the Emperor Ranjit Singh - which occurred in 1839 - having eyed his kingdom which had remained a bastion of freedom while the rest of the subcontinent had fallen to the foreign occupiers.

On many occasions the East India Company came close to defeat at the hands of the Sikhs. The conflict came to an end March 30, 1848 with a victory for the East India Company, but specifically through the betrayal and treason by the Hindu Dogra brothers, and by the Indians who supported the British side wholesale. The Sikh Empire was annexed to the British Raj. However, the resulting mutual respect between the belligerents saw the Sikhs in turn support the British in all major campaigns up to the creation of two new nations on the subcontinent in 1947.

This is an account of the second war by Amarpal Singh, who has already produced a similar book about the first war. It is definitive and incredibly detailed. Considering its size, smallness of font and maximum coverage of every page, this initially intimidating book is very easy to read and near impossible to put down once it gets hold of you.

Broken down into five main chapters titled, Prelude, Insurrection, War, Dissolution and The Battlefields, the book also includes a comprehensive appendix with seven sections. There are ten line-drawn maps, an A-Section with 41 photographs and at the beginning a very useful Chronology which runs from June 23, 1757 (Battle of Plassey) through to October 22, 1893 (Death of Duleep Singh) with a colossal amount of date information in between.


[Courtesy: Military Modelling. Edited by sikhchic.com]
July 10, 2017
 

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A New Account By
Amarpal Singh"









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