Accounts of the 1857 uprising in India were written by people with very different roles and loyalties: soldiers, local residents, officials, and later chroniclers. Their descriptions can disagree not only about what happened, but also about who took part and why.
When historians compare eyewitness accounts of 1857, what clues help them assess a source’s reliability without dismissing it just because the writer had a strong point of view? I’d also like to know how oral histories and records created later fit into that picture.