In 1963, the new owners of the Lord Clyde pub in Walmer, England, discovered a human skull packed away in a back room. A handwritten note, tucked into the eye socket, identified the human remains as those of Alum Bheg, a “principal leader” of the 1857 Indian Uprising, who had met his demise at the mouth of a cannon (xix). Following the death of the pub owner, the skull was passed among family members until 2014, when the most recent recipients contacted Kim Wagner. The result of this email is Wagner's The Skull of Alum Bheg, a carefully crafted study of the Sialkot rising and the lasting repercussions of this violent episode in the history of the 1857 Indian Uprising. Furthermore, as he tracks Alum Bheg's journey from East India Company ally to war trophy, Wagner addresses the significant role of violence in imperial control and representations of colonial power.

There is a rich and considerable historiography surrounding the Indian Uprising of 1857, with much of the recent literature emphasizing the larger imperial or even global repercussions of these events. As Wagner notes, however, there is little written on the outbreak of violence in Sialkot in July of 1857, when Alum Bheg and countless others found themselves swept up in the ensuing chaos. Furthermore, what scholarship does exist simply recounts the deaths of well-known European civilians. Drawing influence from subaltern studies, Wagner moves beyond the “big events” and key figures of the 1857 Indian Uprising to explore “the experience of ordinary people, from across the world” (7). He relies on material from a variety of British and Indian sources, including the published correspondence of Alum Bheg's alleged victims, “the letters, petitions, proclamations and statements made by Indian rebels, sepoys and others,” and the “published accounts by Indians who worked within the British colonial administration” (7). In doing so, Wagner breathes new life into recognizable characters and deepens our understanding of particular events and colonial practices.

In addition to a prologue, introduction, and epilogue, the book includes eleven fast-paced and relatively short chapters that move the reader from the initial rumors of unrest to the collection of Alum Bheg's skull following his execution in 1858. Wagner sensitively and convincingly recreates the world in which the sepoys and others (both Indian and non-Indian) lived and the collective mentalities that shaped their individual decisions. For example, in the book's early chapters, he contextualizes the building of unrest in Sialkot in half a century of government intervention in Indian rituals, illuminating why both the sepoys and the local population likely believed the rumors of greased cartridges and polluted foodstuffs. Indian concerns of government intervention, he argues, were no more displaced than European beliefs in the designing motives of Indian soldiers. Indeed, much of what was occurring across India, he concludes, might best be understood as “a ‘conversation of rumours’—albeit a conversation ‘in which neither of the interlocutors understood the others’ language’” (74). The confusion surrounding the events of 1857 proved pervasive, and Indians and Europeans alike were unsettled by this world turned upside down.

Particularly strong is Wagner's recreation of the Bengal Army and the environment in which the sepoys operated. The decision to join the uprising was never a foregone conclusion; rather, individuals had to be recruited, and cooperation between Muslims and Hindus had to be cultivated. Furthermore, Wagner argues, the Indian soldiers did not necessarily express an anti-European vendetta. While many of the rebelling sepoys shed their allegiance to the East India Company, they did not always “sever the relationship” with their officers. Instead, some offered their officers employment if they would lead them in their efforts against the British. Their grievances, in other words, were directed at company rule, and “the conditions that Alum Bheg and others imagined after 1857” varied little from what had existed under British rule (106–7). For most involved, the uprising was not a carefully planned and strategic insurrection, but instead a chaotic and tumultuous experience.

In constructing this “subaltern prosopography,” Wagner does more than exonerate Alum Bheg (8). He challenges the Victorian stereotypes which cast the violence of the colonized as inherently brutish and that of the colonizer as legitimate retribution. Rather than a treacherous mutineer, Alum Bheg emerges from the pages of the book as a man “swept along by the current of events bigger than himself” (131). At the same time, Captain Costello's collection of Alum Bheg's skull is not excused as a scientific venture, but instead is revealed as “an expression of power and brute force” crucial to British imperial control (198).

Although Wagner's narrative is compelling, his writing at times feels rushed. Furthermore, while Wagner places the collection of skulls in a wider context, he offers little discussion of the growing literature on imperial violence outside of India. Regardless, Wagner's book is an important one, and a welcome contribution to the debate regarding the need to confront the violence prevalent in Britain's imperial past. This is a book that will appeal to undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars interested in British imperial history, South Asian history, and questions of imperial violence.