In the historiography of the Great Revolt, the sheer volume of the published material written from the perspective of the victor ensured that for nearly a century the colonial view of this upheaval was hegemonic. Until the first decade of the 20th century there was no major published work from the perspective of the colonised. This, however, is not surprising. Given the ruthlessness with which the Revolt was crushed, and the repression unleashed by the colonial state in the post-1857 period, any attempt to glorify the Revolt was out of the question.