A bird arrow from the Rumpa Rebellion. Bamboo, length 70 cm (As1896,-.1184. © Trustees of the British Museum)

A bird arrow from the Rumpa Rebellion, south India, 1879-81

December 16, 2023

In 2009 I was excited to discover that the British Museum held a bird arrow acquired by a British army officer during the Rumpa Rebellion, a tribal uprising in India in 1879-81 that was countered by a force of Indian and British troops eventually numbering more than 2,500 men. Among the officers involved was my great-great grandfather, Lieutenant Walter Andrew Gale, Royal Engineers, and at the time I was carrying out research in the India Office Records of the British Library …

The Rumpa Rebellion, India, 1879-80: jungle fever and the cause of malaria

May 30, 2015

The greatest challenge facing the regimental surgeons with the Rumpa Field Force in India in 1879 was jungle fever, ‘that severe sickness that paralyses every effort, disheartens the men, and fosters the preconceived belief of the superiority and valour of the insurgents.’ The Madras Military Proceedings for 1879 and 1880, the source of this quote and others below, reveals a stark picture ...

In my novel The Tiger Warrior, Lieutenant Howard of the Madras Sappers shoots his way out of a jungle shrine in 1879 using an obsolete 1851 Colt percussion revolver inherited from his father from the time of the Indian Mutiny. This photo shows me sh… — In my novel *The Tiger Warrior*, Lieutenant Howard of the Madras Sappers shoots his way out of a jungle shrine in 1879 using an obsolete 1851 Colt percussion revolver inherited from his father from the time of the Indian Mutiny. This photo shows me shooting the original London-made revolver that was the basis for that scene (photo: Alan Gibbins).

The Rumpa Rebellion, India, 1879-80: counter-insurgency in the jungle

May 29, 2015

The Military History of the Madras Engineers and Pioneers, published in 1881, contains only a brief account of the involvement of the Madras Sappers and Miners in the Rumpa Rebellion, written by an officer who was not present and at a time when most of the junior officers who had been deployed in the Rumpa Field Force had left the Corps for other appointments ...

A woodcut from John Campbell’s A Personal Narrative of Thirteen Years Service amongst the Wild Tribes of Khondistan for the Suppression of Human Sacrifice, published in 1864. — A woodcut from John Campbell’s *A Personal Narrative of Thirteen Years Service amongst the Wild Tribes of Khondistan for the Suppression of Human Sacrifice*, published in 1864.

The Rumpa Rebellion, India, 1879-80: Human sacrifice in the jungle

May 28, 2015

In my novel The Tiger Warrior, set partly in India during the Victorian period, Lieutenant John Howard of the Madras Sappers takes cover with his men on an armoured river steamer deep in the jungle of southern India, part of a force deployed against a tribal rebellion in the Rumpa district of the eastern Ghats in 1879. As bullets spatter off the metal plating, Howard watches a horrifying ritual unfold among the rebels gathered on the opposite river bank, one that leads him to pick up a rifle and take a course of action that he could never have thought imaginable ...