'Interior of a tent', 1857

An Indian servant attends to the requirements of Bengal Army officers inside their tent, 1857.

Coloured lithograph from 'The Campaign in India 1857-58', a series of 26 coloured lithographs by William Simpson, E Walker and others, after G F Atkinson, published by Day and Son, 1857-1858.

By 1857 the relationship between native troops and European officers was becoming strained. Whereas an earlier generation of officers had been interested in the religion and culture of their men, by the 1850s there were few such individuals in the Bengal Army. Instead, officers of an evangelical persuasion had started preaching in the hope of converting sepoys to Christianity. Officers looked down on their men as racial inferiors, at best to be avoided in favour of European society.