Disclaimer: the topics discussed in this blog post include descriptions of murder, torture and rape. Reader discretion is advised.
It was around a year ago that Underground Overground Archaeology again hit the mainstream news, this time with stories about our excavations at the site of the new Court Theatre (a few of those stories here, here, and here). While it’s great when media outlets publish stories about the archaeological work that we do, there are definitely pros and cons to the pieces. The main pro is, of course, that a much wider range of people get to hear about the archaeological work that we do in Christchurch, rather than just those that follow us on social media or keep up with this blog. The cons are that because the journalists that are reporting the stories aren’t archaeologists and often have word or time limits to keep to, their stories can be quite brief and often focus in on the stereotype that the only thing us archaeologists are interested in is ‘treasure’. Now, don’t get me wrong, us archaeologists are the first to get excited when we find a rare or unusual artefact, but we’re not pirates. For us, the real ‘treasure’ is the stories that the artefacts tell us about the lives of people of the past, rather than the artefacts themselves. Working out those stories comes long after excavation is finished and only happens once we have gone through all of the information we’ve collected, the notes on the features that we took when we excavated them, the results of the artefact analysis, and the information that we can draw from the historical record, and see what these three information sources, along with anything else we might have access to, can tell us. A lot of the time when we’re getting mainstream media interest, it’s at the time of the archaeological excavation, meaning that we haven’t yet worked out all the interesting stories as we are only at the start of figuring them out. That was very much the case when we were being interviewed about the Court Theatre site, where one of the ‘treasures’ that the journalists were most interested in was a clay pipe. A year later, we are now at a point where we’ve done most of the artefact analysis and we can actually start to narrow down some of those stories that the artefacts from the site are able to tell us.
A classic example of the use of ‘treasure’ by the mainstream media. While they’re not wrong, it does perpetuate the stereotype of archaeologists as Indiana Jones type figures, which is very much not the case. Image: Otago Daily Times.
The clay pipe in question is probably the most violent and confronting artefact that we’ve had come out of an archaeological site in Christchurch, at least in recent years. The pipe was elaborately moulded and depicted a man, wearing a turban and Indian style dress, holding a sword above his shoulder, ready to strike. Next to him is a woman lying with one arm raised, her chest bare and her dress pooled at her waist. A baby lies at her feet. A woman is shown fleeing on the side of the bowl. Stamped on the stem of the pipe was “NA NA SAIB” and “DELHI”.
Image: C. Watson
The clay pipe is depicting an event known as the Bibighar massacre, which took place within the 1857 Indian Rebellion. This rebellion happened when sepoys, or Indian soldiers, mutinied against the East India Company. The East India Company had had a presence in India since the early 17th century, and by the 19th century was effectively responsible for the government of India and was employing sepoys within their army. The reasons behind the mutiny were complicated but were mainly a result of an accumulation of grievances, mostly around the structure of the army and treatment of the sepoys, and the treatment of landowners and high-status individuals by the British. Sepoys in Meerut and Delhi mutinied against the British officers in May of 1857, with the rebel sepoys taking control of Delhi. News of the mutinies spread, with sepoys in some regions also rebelling, while in other regions sepoys fought for the British. In June of 1857, the sepoys under the leadership of the British General Wheeler at Cawnpore (Kanpur) mutinied. This led to the Siege of Cawnpore, where General Wheeler, the British soldiers, and their families, were trapped by the rebel sepoys in an entrenchment for three weeks with little water or food. The siege came to an end on the 27th of June when Nana Saib, an Indian nobleman who was a prominent leader in the rebellion, offered safe passage to Wheeler and the British to the nearby river where they could board boats and leave Cawnpore. Wheeler trusted Nana, as prior to the rebellion he had been an ally to the East India Company. However, upon reaching the riverbank and beginning to board the boats, the Indian sepoys opened fire on the British, resulting in many casualties. The 120 women and children that survived the massacre were re-captured and taken as captives. They were taken to a local house, Bibighar, with a group of another 80 women and children captured from another town later also taken to the house. On July 15, this group of women and children were massacred in a brutal killing.
Sir Joseph Noel Paton painted In Memoriam in 1858 in honour of the victims of the Bibighar massacre. We suspect that this painting was one of the source works that inspired the design of the pipe, particularly the positioning of the central woman and child.
‘The Chamber of Blood’ is a tinted lithograph by Vincent Brooks after Lieutenant C W Crump, Madras Artillery, No. 2. It was part of the series ‘A Pictorial Record of the Cawnpore Massacre’ published by Henry Graves and Co., London, in 1858.
A memorial to the women and children killed in the massacre was erected by the British. The memorial is built over the well in which the women and children’s bodies were thrown.Image: S. Bourne.
Many reasons have been suggested for why the women and children were killed. Some historians have suggested that they were killed in the hope that it would stop East India Company forces from approaching Cawnpore. Others have suggested that it was to stop information from being leaked to the British if Cawnpore fell, or to undermine Nana Saib’s relationship with the British, or that it was simply an act of revenge for British murders of Indian civilians. Following the massacre at Bibighar, British soldiers retook Cawnpore and took the sepoys as prisoners. The British forced the sepoys to lick the blood that stained the walls and floors of the Bibighar as punishment. They were then hung, or ‘blew from the cannon’, a method of execution where the victim is tied to the mouth of a cannon, which is then fired. This method was used by the British in India as it destroyed the body and prevented Hindu and Muslim funerary rites from being carried out on the victim. By the end of 1857, the British had largely regained control, with the final rebels defeated in June of 1858. The acts that took place as part of the Indian Mutiny included atrocious acts of violence by both sides. The rebellion resulted in the dissolution of the East India Company by the Government of India Act 1858, with the governing of India transferred to the British Crown.
Going back to the clay pipe that we found at the Court Theatre site, from an example in the Amsterdam Pipe Museum we know that the pipe was manufactured by French pipe manufacturers L. Fiolet. Louis Fiolet was a French pipe manufacturer based as St. Omer. Fiolet took over his grandfather’s business in 1834, adopting the usage of the ‘L. Fiolet’ mark at this time. Around 1885 Fiolet went into partnership with his son-in-law, George Audebert, as Fiolet and Audebert. Fiolet died in 1892 and the firm operated as Audebert Fiolet from 1893 onwards. Fiolet pipes are said to be second only to Gambier pipes in quality, and the company was one of the most prominent French pipe manufacturers in the 19th century, having a base in France and a shop in London (Hammond, 1987). While we can’t include a picture of the example from the Amsterdam Pipe Museum due to copyright, you can view it by clicking on the hyperlink. The Amsterdam Pipe Museum example shows that the pipe was coloured, with the Indian attacker’s skin coloured brown, and the British woman and the baby’s skin painted pink. Presumably our pipe was also painted, but that decoration has weathered off our pipe due to it being buried in the ground for over 150 years.
At the time of our interviews a year ago, while we had worked out that the pipe was inspired by the Indian Mutiny, and we knew that it was made by L. Fiolet, we didn’t know the details of the Bibighar massacre that inspired the pipe. Having read the account of that massacre, it shines a new light on the brutality of the pipe. At the time of our interview, we made reference to how the pipe speaks to the globalised nature of the 19th century, the pipe being a French made pipe, inspired by Indian historical events, found in New Zealand. But it’s only now that we have done the more detailed research, that a more nuanced view appears.
The first reports of the Siege of Cawnpore and the massacre of British civilians were embellished by shocking tales of rape, torture and mutilation. Nana Saib, with his role in the munity and the massacre, became known as the ‘Tiger of Cawnpore’. Nana was the face of the massacre for the British public, and as a result of that became a pop culture villain who was referenced in tales about savagery and resistance to British authority within the empire. Plays, ballads, stories and paintings were quickly produced, with the sentiment of ‘remember Cawnpore’ an underlying message (Wallace, 2015). It is highly likely that Fiolet, with their presence in London and their targeting of the British market, were influenced by the popular culture of the period to produce the pipe, with the smoking pipe just one of several pop culture artefacts depicting the events of the mutiny and massacre. The depictions of Nana and the massacre in popular culture acted as propaganda, which was used by the British to generate public support for the British response to the rebellion, as well as justification for some of the atrocities carried out by British soldiers.
The design of the smoking pipe highlights the British view of the mutiny, and of Nana Saib as the ‘Tiger of Cawnpore’. The Indian sepoy’s skin is coloured brown, he is wearing a turban and Indian dress, and is armed with an Indian style sword, all clear indicators of his race and position. The woman is bare breasted, her clothes pooling at her waist and her hair loose. Her skin is painted pink, a clear reference to her ethnicity as British, and her half-nakedness both symbolises her vulnerability and gives connotations of rape. The baby at her feet is also painted pink and is naked, emphasising its vulnerability. The scene of the pipe depicts the atrocity of the Bibighar massacre and the most horrific of the actions by the Indians at the Siege of Cawnpore and is clearly designed for the British narrative of the events. The choice to depict women and children as the primary victims of the mutiny, rather than the largely male-dominated East India Company and military power structures the sepoys were rebelling against, was a deliberate one, and can be seen as the weaponization of white femininity in defence of the (patriarchal, European) imperial power structures at play in India at the time. Of course, historical events are often filled with contesting views. If the pipe manufacturer had been influenced by the Indian sepoy perspective on the Siege of Cawnpore, then the pipe might show the sepoys attacking the British, or the British forcing the sepoys to lick blood off the walls of the Bibighar, or tying them to cannons to execute them. In the 21st century we can’t ignore the power imbalances created by colonialism and the impossible standards that disempowered people were held to, where there was never a correct means of resistance. But we can acknowledge this and acknowledge that the British also committed atrocities, while still viewing what was done to the British women and children as a horrific act.
For the Victorian British and the perspective that was created through depictions of the mutiny in popular culture, Nana was the embodiment of the nightmare of British imperialism and empire building. He represented “the latent treachery of all subject races, the rejection of British Progress, the destruction of the sacred family unit” (Wallace, 2015: 611). The rubbish pit in which our smoking pipe was found dates to the 1860s, around the year 1866. In 1860s New Zealand, the New Zealand Wars were being fought in Taranaki and Waikato. By understanding the history of the events that the pipe depicts, and the image of Nana Saib in Victorian popular culture as the Tiger of Cawnpore, one has to wonder if the pipe’s presence in Christchurch was intended as a warning to British colonists living in the city, a reminder of what the local population can do when oppressed. The pipe is more than an example of the global trade connections that existed in the 19th century, it’s a symbol of British imperialism and the consequences of that. And understanding that history, and the relevance of that history to our current day society, is the true treasure that archaeology can uncover.
Clara Watson
References
Hammond, P., 1987. The London Commercial Agents of French Clay Pipe Manufacturers Fiolet and Audebert Fiolet. Society for Clay Pipe Research Newsletter. 15: 16-21.
Wallace, B., 2015. Nana Sahib in British Culture and Memory. The Historical Journal. 58 (2): 589-613.