This article offers a microhistory of a forgotten panic that engulfed the north Indian city of Allahabad in 1870, when the city's European residents began to anticipate a revolt by the native infantry. Rumors of this looming event, I argue, confirmed suspicions that ill-advised income tax legislation and military retrenchment had created a combustible situation. The apparent threat of insurrection was therefore symptomatic of a more systemic ailment: burgeoning distrust between the government of India, local officials, and British civilians. Rather than undertaking counterinsurgent action against dissident Indians or so-called Wahhabi agitators, the central administration attempted to tamp down European critique of its policies. I thereby foreground the government's confrontational relationship with the Anglo-Indian press and analyze its legalistic efforts to police the new telegraph lines that brought the false news of this fictitious mutiny to metropolitan notice.

本文讲述了 1870 年席卷印度北部城市阿拉哈巴德的一场被遗忘的恐慌的微观历史，当时该市的欧洲居民开始预计本土步兵将发动叛乱。我认为，有关这一迫在眉睫的事件的传言证实了人们的怀疑，即不明智的所得税立法和军事紧缩造成了一个易燃的局面。因此，叛乱的明显威胁是一种更为系统性问题的症状：印度政府、地方官员和英国平民之间日益增长的不信任。中央政府没有对持不同政见的印度人或所谓的瓦哈比煽动者采取平叛行动，而是试图压制欧洲对其政策的批评。