Timeline of major famines in India during British rule

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Major famines in India during British rule

This is a timeline of major famines on the Indian subcontinent during British rule from 1765 to 1947. The famines included here occurred both in the princely states (regions administered by Indian rulers), British India (regions administered either by the British East India Company from 1765 to 1857; or by the British Crown, in the British Raj, from 1858 to 1947) and Indian territories independent of British rule such as the Maratha Empire. The total human population of British India was around 331 Million. At least 55.1 million people may have died in famines during British rule, which was around 17% of entire population. Such death toll is similar to wiping out the entire south Korean population.

The year 1765 is chosen as the start year because that year the British East India Company, after its victory in the Battle of Buxar, was granted the Diwani (rights to land revenue) in the region of Bengal (although it would not directly administer Bengal until 1784 when it was granted the Nizamat, or control of law and order.) The year 1947 is the year in which the British Raj was dissolved and the new successor states of Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan were established.

Timeline

Chronological list of famines in India between 1765 and 1947[1]
YearName of famine (if any)British territoryIndian kingdoms/Princely statesMortalityMap or illustration
1769–70Great Bengal FamineBihar, Northern and Central Bengal10 million[2] (about one third of the then population of Bengal).[3]
The Bengal region shown in a later map (1880)
1783–84Chalisa famineDelhi, Western Oudh, Eastern Punjab region, Rajputana, and Kashmir11 million people may have died during the years 1782–84. Severe famine. Large areas were depopulated.[4]
Oudh, the Doab (land between the Ganges and Jumna rivers), Rohilkhand, the Delhi territories, eastern Punjab, Rajputana and Kashmir, were affected by the Chalisa famine.
1791–92Doji bara famine or Skull famineMadras PresidencyHyderabad, Southern Maratha country, Deccan, Gujarat, and Marwar11 million people may have died during the years 1788–94. One of the most severe famines known. People died in such numbers that they could not be cremated or buried.[5]
Map of India (1795) shows the Northern Circars, Hyderabad (Nizam), Southern Maratha Kingdom, Gujarat, and Marwar (Southern Rajputana), all affected by the Doji bara famine.
1837–38Agra famine of 1837–38Central Doab and trans-Jumna districts of the North-Western Provinces (later Agra Province), including Delhi and Hissar0.8 million (or 800,000).[6]
Map of the North-Western Provinces showing the region severely afflicted by the famine (in blue)
1860–61Upper Doab famine of 1860–61Upper Doab of Agra; Delhi and Hissar divisions of the PunjabEastern Rajputana2 million.[6]
A map showing the Doab region
1865–67Orissa famine of 1866Orissa (also 1867) and Bihar; Bellary and Ganjam districts of Madras1 million (814,469 in Orissa, 135,676 in Bihar and 10,898 in Ganjam)[7]
A 1907 map of Orissa, now Odisha, shown as the southwestern region of Greater Bengal. Coastal Balasore district was one of the worst-hit areas in the Odisha famine of 1866.
1868–70Rajputana famine of 1869Ajmer, Western Agra, Eastern PunjabRajputana1.5 million (mostly in the princely states of Rajputana)[8]
Map of Rajputana consisting of the princely states of the Rajputana Agency and the British territory of Ajmer-Merwara, in 1909; the map was little changed since the year of the famine, 1869.
1873–74Bihar famine of 1873–74Bihar0.0 million. An extensive relief effort was organized by the Bengal government. There were little to none significant mortalities during the famine.[9]
A 1907 map of Bihar, British India, shown as the northern region of Greater Bengal. Monghyr district (top middle) was one of the worst-hit areas in the Bihar famine of 1873–74.
1876–78Great Famine of 1876–78 (also Southern India famine of 1876–78)Madras and BombayMysore and Hyderabad5.5 million in British territory.[6] Mortality unknown for princely states. Total famine mortality estimates vary from 6.1 to 10.3 million.[10]
Map of the British Indian Empire (1880), showing where the famine struck. Both years: Madras, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Bombay); during the second year: Central Provinces and the North-Western Provinces, and a small area in the Punjab
1896–97Indian famine of 1896–97Madras, Bombay Deccan, Bengal, United Provinces, Central Provinces. Also parts of Punjab specially Bagar tract.[11]Northern and eastern Rajputana, parts of Central India and Hyderabad5 million in British territory.[6] [lower-alpha 1]
Map from Chicago Sunday Tribune, January 31, 1897, showing the areas in India affected by the famine.
1899–1900Indian famine of 1899–1900Bombay, Central Provinces, Berar, Ajmer. Also parts of Punjab specially Bagar tract.[11]Hyderabad, Rajputana, Central India, Baroda, Kathiawar, Cutch,1 million (in British territories).[6] Mortality unknown for princely states.[lower-alpha 2]
Map of Indian famine of 1899–1900 from Prosperous British India by William Digby
1943–44Bengal famine of 1943Bengal1.5 million from starvation; 2.1 million including deaths from epidemics.[14]
A map of the districts of Bengal, 1943, from Famine Enquiry Commission, Report on Bengal, 1945

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ According to a 1901 estimate published in The Lancet, this and other famines in India between 1891 to 1901 caused 19,000,000 deaths from "starvation or to the diseases arising therefrom",[12] an estimate criticised by the writer and retired Indian Civil Servant Charles McMinn.[13]
  2. ↑ According to a 1901 estimate published in The Lancet, this and other famines in India between 1891 to 1901 caused 19,000,000 deaths from "starvation or to the diseases arising therefrom",[12] an estimate criticised by the writer and retired Indian Civil Servant Charles McMinn.[13]

Citations

  1. ↑ Imperial Gazetteer of India, volume III 1907, pp. 501–502
  2. ↑ Cambridge 1983, p. 528
  3. ↑ Cambridge 1983, p. 299
  4. ↑ Grove 2007, p. 80
  5. ↑ Grove 2007, p. 83
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Fieldhouse 1996, p. 132
  7. ↑ Cambridge 1983, p. 529
  8. 1 2 Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III 1907, p. 488
  9. ↑ Hall-Matthews 2008, p. 4
  10. ↑ Davis 2001, p. 7
  11. 1 2 C.A.H. Townsend, Final repor of thirds revised revenue settlement of Hisar district from 1905-1910, Gazetteer of Department of Revenue and Disaster Management, Haryana, point 22, page 11.
  12. 1 2 The effect of famines on the population of India, The Lancet, Vol. 157, No. 4059, June 15, 1901, pp. 1713-1714;
    Sven Beckert (2015). Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Random House. p. 337. ISBN 978-0-375-71396-5. ;
    Davis, Mike (2001). Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. Verso. p. 7. ISBN 978-1859847398.
  13. 1 2 C.W. McMinn, Famine Truths, Half Truths, Untruths (Calcutta: 1902), p.87; According to the writer and retired Indian Civil Servant Charles McMinn, The Lancet's estimates were an overestimate based on a mistake in the population changes in India from 1891-1901. The Lancet, states McMinn, declared that the population increased only by 2.8 million for the whole of India, while the actual increase was 7.5 million according to him. The Lancet source, contrary to McMinn claims, states that the population increased from 287,317,048 to 294,266,702 (2.42%). Adjusting for changes in census tracts, the total population increase in India was only 1.49% between 1891 and 1901, a major decline from the decadal change of 11.2% observed between 1881 and 1891, according to The Lancet article in April 13, 1901. It attributes the decrease in population change rate to excess mortality from successive famines and the plague. See: The Census in India, The Lancet, Vol. 157, No. 4050, pp. 1107–1108
  14. ↑ Cambridge 1983, p. 531.

References

Famines

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  • Davis, Mike (2001), Late Victorian Holocausts, Verso Books, ISBN 978-1-85984-739-8
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  • Dutt, Romesh Chunder (2005) [1900], Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in India, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd (reprinted by Adamant Media Corporation), ISBN 1-4021-5115-2
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  • Government of India (1867), Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine in Bengal and Orissa in 1866, Volumes I, II, Calcutta
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  • Greenough, Paul Robert (1982), Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943-1944, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-503082-2
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  • Hall-Matthews, David (2008), "Inaccurate Conceptions: Disputed Measures of Nutritional Needs and Famine Deaths in Colonial India", Modern Asian Studies, 42 (1): 1–24, doi:10.1017/S0026749X07002892
  • Hall-Matthews, David (1996), "Historical Roots of Famine Relief Paradigms: Ideas on Dependency and Free Trade in India in the 1870s", Disasters, 20 (3): 216–230, doi:10.1111/j.1467-7717.1996.tb01035.x
  • Hardiman, David (1996), "Usuary, Dearth and Famine in Western India", Past and Present, 152: 113–156, doi:10.1093/past/152.1.113
  • Hill, Christopher V. (1991), "Philosophy and Reality in Riparian South Asia: British Famine Policy and Migration in Colonial North India", Modern Asian Studies, 25 (2): 263–279, doi:10.1017/s0026749x00010672
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  • Kaiwar, Vasant (2016), "Famines of structural adjustment in colonial India", in Kaminsky, Arnold P; Long, Roger D, Nationalism and Imperialism in South and Southeast Asia: Essays Presented to Damodar R.SarDesai, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 978-1-351-99742-3
  • Keim, Mark E. (2015), "Extreme Weather Events: The Role of Public Health in Disaster Risk Reduction as a Means for Climate Change Adaptation", in George Luber; Jay Lemery, Global Climate Change and Human Health: From Science to Practice, Wiley, p. 42, ISBN 978-1-118-60358-1
  • Klein, Ira (August 1973), "Death in India, 1871-1921", The Journal of Asian Studies, Association for Asian Studies, 32 (4): 639–659, doi:10.2307/2052814, JSTOR 2052814
  • Maclachlan, Morgan D. (1983), Why They Did Not Starve: Biocultural Adaptation in a South Indian Village, Institute for the Study of Human Issues, ISBN 978-0-89727-001-4
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  • McAlpin, Michelle B. (Autumn 1983), "Famines, Epidemics, and Population Growth: The Case of India", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, The MIT Press, 14 (2): 351–366, doi:10.2307/203709, JSTOR 203709
  • McAlpin, Michelle B. (1979), "Dearth, Famine, and Risk: The Changing Impact of Crop Failures in Western India, 1870–1920", The Journal of Economic History, 39 (1): 143–157, doi:10.1017/S0022050700096352
  • McGregor, Pat; Cantley, Ian (1992), "A Test of Sen's Entitlement Hypothesis", The Statistician, 41 (3 Special Issue: Conference on Applied Statistics in Ireland, 1991): 335–341, JSTOR 2348558
  • Mellor, John W.; Gavian, Sarah (1987), "Famine: Causes, Prevention, and Relief", Science, New Series, 235 (4788): 539–545, doi:10.1126/science.235.4788.539, JSTOR 1698676
  • Muller, W. (1897), "Notes on the Distress Amongst the Hand-Weavers in the Bombay Presidency During the Famine of 1896–97", The Economic Journal, 7 (26): 285–288, doi:10.2307/2957261, JSTOR 2957261
  • Nisbet, John (1901), Burma Under British Rule - and Before, II, Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co. Ltd
  • Owen, Nicholas (2008), The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885–1947 (Oxford Historical Monographs), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 300, ISBN 0-19-923301-2
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  • Roy, Tirthankar (June 2016), Were Indian famines 'natural' or 'man-made'?, London School of Economics, Economic History, Working Papers No: 243/2016 |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  • Seavoy, Ronald E. (1986), Famine in Peasant Societies, London: Greenwood Press, ISBN 978-0-313-25130-6
  • Sen, A. K. (1977), "Starvation and Exchange Entitlements: A General Approach and its Application to the Great Bengal Famine", Cambridge Journal of Economics
  • Sen, A. K. (1982), Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp. ix, 257, ISBN 0-19-828463-2
  • Sharma, Sanjay (1993), "The 1837–38 famine in U.P.: Some dimensions of popular action", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 30 (3): 337–372, doi:10.1177/001946469303000304
  • Siddiqi, Asiya (1973), Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State: Uttar Pradesh, 1819–1833, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 222, ISBN 0-19-821553-3
  • Stokes, Eric (1975), "Agrarian Society and the Pax Britannica in Northern India in the Early Nineteenth Century", Modern Asian Studies, 9 (4): 505–528, doi:10.1017/s0026749x00012877, JSTOR 312079
  • Stone, Ian, Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy (Cambridge South Asian Studies), Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 389, ISBN 0-521-52663-9
  • Tomlinson, B. R. (1993), The Economy of Modern India, 1860–1970 (The New Cambridge History of India, III.3), Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press., ISBN 0-521-58939-8
  • Washbrook, David (1994), "The Commercialization of Agriculture in Colonial India: Production, Subsistence and Reproduction in the 'Dry South', c. 1870–1930", Modern Asian Studies, 28 (1): 129–164, doi:10.1017/s0026749x00011720, JSTOR 312924
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Epidemics and Public Health

  • Banthia, Jayant; Dyson, Tim (December 1999), "Smallpox in Nineteenth-Century India", Population and Development Review, Population Council, 25 (4): 649–689, doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.1999.00649.x, JSTOR 172481
  • Caldwell, John C. (December 1998), "Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India", Population and Development Review, Population Council, 24 (4): 675–696, doi:10.2307/2808021, JSTOR 2808021
  • Drayton, Richard (2001), "Science, Medicine, and the British Empire", in Winks, Robin, Oxford History of the British Empire: Historiography, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 264–276, ISBN 0-19-924680-7
  • Derbyshire, I. D. (1987), "Economic Change and the Railways in North India, 1860-1914", Population Studies, 21 (3): 521–545, doi:10.1017/s0026749x00009197
  • Klein, Ira (1988), "Plague, Policy and Popular Unrest in British India", Modern Asian Studies, Cambridge University Press, 22 (4): 723–755, doi:10.1017/s0026749x00015729, JSTOR 312523
  • Watts, Sheldon (1999), "British Development Policies and Malaria in India 1897-c. 1929", Past and Present (165): 141–181, doi:10.2307/651287
  • Wylie, Diana (2001), "Disease, Diet, and Gender: Late Twentieth Century Perspectives on Empire", in Winks, Robin, Oxford History of the British Empire: Historiography, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 277–289, ISBN 0-19-924680-7
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