The 1857 uprising against the East India Company began among sepoys and spread into a wider revolt centred on Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpur. Its suppression brought the abolition of Company rule and direct Crown government from 1858, and reshaped cities: Delhi was sacked and partly cleared around the Red Fort, and cantonments and civil lines were laid out as segregated, defensible European quarters. Urban form became an instrument of colonial security.
It triggered the shift to direct British rule and a more militarised, racially segregated pattern of colonial city-building.
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