The sepoy councils resemble those juntas of young officers who seize power in modern states

The sepoy councils resemble those juntas of young officers who seize power in modern states. This is what national revolt often looks like. Just because the uprising is led by soldiers rather than by progressive intellectuals lately returned from the LSE or the London Inns of count, it does not mean that it does not have the seeds of modernity in it. It certainly cannot  be written off as a cry of rage against the modern world

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 581

He believed in 'socialism in one country', as long as it wasn't his own

Charles was a whiggish improving sort, who yearned to expropriate the landlords in favour of the true proprietors, the peasants who actually tilled the soil. Like many other modernizers, and there were plenty of them in India in the 1980s and 1840s, he would not have dreamed of applying these radical nostrums to England. He believed  in 'socialism in one country', as long as it wasn't his own.

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 398

Imagining that Napier had sent a one-word message 'Peccavi' - I have sinned

At least the annexation of Sind survives faintly in our memories, if only for the joke that Punch made about it, imagining that Napier had sent a one-word message 'Peccavi' - I have sinned. Posterity, literal-minded as ever, assumed that Napier really had sent such a message.

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 340

This is the most disappointing thing I have discovered for a very long time.

This view was not confined to British proconsuls. Karl Marx shared it too.

In truth, the British were  in a permanent dither about how best to raise the revenue on which their Raj depended. They began with, and never really lost, a sentimental attachment to the idea of Indian village life. As Sir Charles Metcalfe famously put it: '... Hindoo, Patan, Mughal, Mahratta, Sikh, English, all are masters in turn, but the village communities remain the same.' This view was not confined to British proconsuls. Karl Marx shared it too.

F. Mount,  The tears of the Rajas (2015), 189

It is a myth that there was only one great mutiny in India under British rule

It is a myth that there was only one great mutiny in India under British rule, one single aberration from the peaceful onward flow of the British Raj ... there were 110 uprisings between 1783 and 1900.

F. Mount,  The tears of the Rajas (2015), 71