The Great Uprising of 1857 is one of the important chapters of the struggle for freedom of Indians from foreign domination. For a hundred years (1757-1857) the East India Company ruled over parts of the subcontinent which had come completely under its control after the annexation of the Punjab (1849) and Awadh (1856) by Lord Dalhousie.
The impact of its imperialistic rule on the different phases of the life and conditions of Indian people was by no means healthy. Its cumulative effective was the gradual spread of disaffection among all classes of the population.
There were political, economic, social, religious and military reasons which were boiling underneath for some time. But the out burst was as such sudden as it started without any prior planning and coordination.