India, May 1 -- May marks the 169th anniversary of the 1857 Revolt. As has become the norm, we will see speeches and functions commemorating the "First War of Independence". These tributes will inadvertently reveal a troubling imbalance in our understanding of our collective past: Some of the earliest battles for independence occurred half a century before 1857, when South India witnessed a series of rebellions that shook the East India Company. These challenges to British imperialism have long been neglected, leaving us with an impoverished sense of our past.

The rebellions in South India emerged in the aftermath of the Anglo-Mysore Wars when the Company was ascendant but still insecure. Convinced that Napoleon Bonaparte intended to sen...