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John Fiske-The Unseen World, and other essays (chapter 9)
IX. THE FAMINE OF 1770 IN BENGAL.[30]
[30] The Annals of Rural Bengal. By W. W. Hunter. Vol. I. The Ethnical Frontier of Lower Bengal, with
the Ancient Principalities of Beerbhoom and Bishenpore. Second Edition. New York: Leypoldt and Holt.
1868. 8vo., pp. xvi., 475.
During the famine of 1866 it was found impossible to render public charity available to the female
members of the respectable classes, and many a rural household starved slowly to death without uttering a
complaint or making a sign.
All through the stifling summer of 1770 the people went on dying. The husbandmen sold their cattle;
they sold their implements of agriculture; they devoured their seed-grain; they sold their sons and
daughters, till at length no buyer of children could be found; they ate the leaves of trees and the grass of
the field; and in June, 1770, the Resident at the Durbar affirmed that the living were feeding on the dead.
Day and night..The extent of the depopulation is to our Western imaginations almost incredible. During
those six months of horror, more than TEN MILLIONS of people had perished! It was as if the entire
population of our three or four largest Statesman, woman, and childwere to be utterly swept away
between now and next August, leaving the region between the Hudson and Lake Michigan as quiet and
deathlike as the buried streets of Pompeii. Yet the estimate is based upon most accurate and trustworthy
official returns; and Mr. Hunter may well say that it represents an aggregate of individual suffering
which no European nation has been called upon to contemplate within historic times.
This unparalleled calamity struck down impartially the rich and the poor. The old, aristocratic families of
Lower Bengal were irretrievably ruined. The Rajah of Burdwan, whose possessions were so vast that,
travel as far as he would, he always slept under a roof of his own and within his own jurisdiction, died in
such indigence that his son had to melt down the family plate and beg a loan from the government in
order to discharge his fathers funeral expenses. And our author gives other similar instances. The wealthy
natives who were appointed to assess and collect the internal revenue, being unable to raise the sums
required by the government, were in many cases imprisoned, or their estates were confiscated and re-let
in order to discharge the debt.The course taken by the great famine of 1866 well illustrates the above
views. This famine, also, was caused by the total failure of the December rice-crop, and it was brought to
a close by an abundant harvest in the succeeding year.
Even as regards the maximum price reached, the analogy holds good, in each case rice having risen in
general to nearly twopence, and in particular places to fourpence, a pound; and in each the quoted rates
being for a brief period in several isolated localities merely nominal, no food existing in the market, and
money altogether losing its interchangeable value. In both the people endured silently to the end, with a
fortitude that casual observers of a different temperament and widely dissimilar race may easily mistake
for apathy, but which those who lived among the sufferers are unable to distinguish from qualities that
generally pass under a more honourable name. During 1866, when the famine was severest, I
superintended public instruction throughout the southwestern division of Lower Bengal, including Orissa.
The subordinate native officers, about eight hundred in number, behaved with a steadiness, and when
called upon, with a self-abnegation, beyond praise. Many of them ruined their health. The touching scenes
of self-sacrifice and humble heroism which I witnessed among the poor villagers on my tours of
inspection will remain in my memory till my latest day.
But to meet the famine of 1866 Bengal was equipped with railroads and canals, and better than all, with
an intelligent government. Far from trying to check speculation, as in 1770, the government did all in its
power to stimulate it. In the earlier famine one could hardly engage in the grain trade without becoming
amenable to the law. In 1866 respectable men in vast numbers went into the trade; for government, by
publishing weekly returns of the rates in every district, rendered the traffic both easy and safe. Every one
knew where to buy grain cheapest, and where to sell it dearest, and food was accordingly brought from
the districts that could best spare it, and carried to those which most urgently needed it. Not only were
prices equalized so far as possible throughout the stricken parts, but the publicity given to the high rates in
Lower Bengal induced large shipments from the upper provinces, and the chief seat of the trade became

unable to afford accommodation for landing the vast stores of grain brought down the river. Rice poured
into the affected districts from all parts,railways, canals, and roads vigorously doing their duty.
The result of this wise policy was that scarcity was heightened into famine only in one remote corner of
Bengal. Orissa was commercially isolated in 1866, as the whole country had been in 1770. As far back
as the records extend, Orissa has produced more grain than it can use. It is an exporting, not an importing
province, sending away its surplus grain by sea, and neither requiring nor seeking any communication
with Lower Bengal by land. Long after the rest of the province had begun to prepare for a year of
famine, Orissa kept on exporting. In March, when the alarm was first raised, the southwest monsoon had
set in, rendering the harbours inaccessible. Thus the district was isolated. It was no longer possible to
apply the wholesome policy which was operating throughout the rest of the country. The doomed
population of Orissa, like passengers in a ship without provisions, were called upon to suffer the
extremities of famine; and in the course of the spring and summer of 1866, some seven hundred thousand
people perished.
January, 1869.

http://www.lonympics.co.uk/Famine_in_India.htm
Famines in India
There were 14 famines in India between 11th and 17th century (Bhatia, 1985). B.M. Bhatia believes
earlier famines were localised and it was only after 1860, during the British rule, that famine came to
signify general shortage of foodgrains in the country. In the latter half of the 19th century, there were
approximately 25 major famines across India which killed between 30 and 40 million people. The
famines were the result of the almost total collapse of India's native industries, as its skilled artisans were
driven out of work while British imports flooded the Indian markets.
The famines were a product both of uneven rainfall and British economic and administrative policies,
which since 1857 led to the seizure and conversion of local farmland to foreign owned plantations,
restrictions on internal trade, heavy taxation of Indians to support unsuccessful British expeditions in
Afghanistan like the Second Anglo-Afghan War, inflationary measures that increased the price of food,
and substantial exports of staple crops from India to Britain. (Dutt, 1900 and 1902; Srivastava, 1968; Sen,
1982; Bhatia, 1985.) Some British citizens such as William Digby agitated for policy reforms and famine
relief, but Lord Lytton, the governing British viceroy in India, opposed such changes in the belief they
would stimulate shirking by Indian workers. The first Bengal famine of 1770 is estimated to have taken
nearly one third of the population. The famines continued until Independence in 1948, with the Bengal
famine of 1943-44 being among the most devastating, killing 3-4 million during World War II.
The Famine Commission of 1880 observed each province in British India, including Burma, had a surplus
of foodgrains, and annual surplus was 5.16 million tons (Bhatia, 1970). At that time, annual export of rice
and other grains from India was approximately one million tons.
In 1966, there was a 'near miss' in Bihar, when the USA allocated 900,000 tons of grain to fight the
famine. It is the closest independent India came to a famine.
The increase in food to the population is also reflected in the fact in the 50 years of British rule (1891 to
1941) the population grew by 35% (from 287 million to 389 million) whereas in the 50 years of
democratic rule from 1951 to 2001 the population grew by 183% (from 363 million to 1,023 million). The
fact there have been no famines even with a population that has almost tripled makes it an even more
impressive achievement for the democratic government.
Chronology-1630-1631: there was a famine in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
1770: Indian territory ruled by the British East India Company experienced the first Bengal famine of
1770. An estimated 10 million people died.
1780-1790s: millions died of famine in Bengal, Benares, Jammu, Bombay and Madras.
1800-1825: 1 million Indians died of famine
1850-1875: 5 millions died of famine in Bengal, Orissa, Rajastan and Bihar
1875-1902: 26 million Indians died of famine (1876-1878: 10 millions)
1905-1906: famine raged in areas with the population of 3,3 million.

1906-1907: famine captured areas with the population of 13 million

1907-1908: famine captured areas populated by 49,6 million Indians.
In 1943, India experienced the second Bengal famine of 1943. Over 3 million people died.
In 1966, there was a 'near miss' in Bihar. The USA allocated 900,000 tons of grain to fight the famine.
References-Bhatia, B.M. (1985) Famines in India: A study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of
India with Special Reference to Food Problem, Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
Bhattaharyya B. 1973. A History of Bangla Desh. Dacca.
Dutt, Romesh C. Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in India, first published
1900, 2005 edition by Adamant Media Corporation, Elibron Classics Series, ISBN 1-4021-5115-2.
Dutt, Romesh C. The Economic History of India under early British Rule, first published 1902, 2001
edition by Routledge, ISBN 0-415-24493-5
Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines : An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford, Clarendon
Press, 1982
Srivastava, H.C., The History of Indian Famines from 1858-1918, Sri Ram Mehra and Co., Agra, 1968.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orissa_famine_of_1866
Orissa famine of 1866- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Orissa famine of 1866 affected the east coast of India from Madras upwards, an area covering
180,000 miles and containing a population of 47,500,000; the impact of the famine, however, was greatest
in Orissa, which at that time was quite isolated from the rest of India.[1]
Causes-Like all Indian famines of the 19th-century, the Orissa famine was preceded by a drought: the
population of the region depended on the rice crop of the winter season for their sustenance; however, the
monsoon of 1865 was scanty and stopped prematurely.[1] In addition, the Bengal Board of Revenue made
incorrect estimates of the number of people who would need help and was misled by fictitious price lists.
Consequently, as the food reserves began to dwindle, the gravity of the situation was not grasped until the
end of May 1866, and by then the monsoons had set in.[1]
Course and relief-Efforts to ship the food to the isolated province were hampered because of bad
weather, and when some shipments did reach the coast of Orissa, they could not be moved inland. The
British Indian government imported some 10,000 tons of rice, but they didn't reach the affected
population before September.[1] Although many people died of starvation, more were killed by cholera
before the monsoons and by malaria afterwards. In Orissa alone, at least 1 million people, a third of the
population, died in 1866, and overall in the region approximately 4 to 5 million died in the two-year
period.[1] The heavy rains of 1866 also caused floods which destroyed the rice-crop in low-lying regions.
Consequently, in the following year, another shortfall was expected, and the Government of British India
imported approximately 40,000 tons of rice at four times the usual price.[1] However, this time they overestimated the need and only half the rice was used by the time the summer monsoon of 1867 followed by
a plentiful harvest, ended the famine in 1868. In the two years of the famine, the Government of British
India spend approximately Rs. 95 lakhs on famine relief for 35 million units (i.e. one person per day); a
large proportion of the cost, however, was the high price of the imported grain.[1]
Notes- a b c d e f g Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III 1907, p. 486
References-Ambirajan, S. (1976), "Malthusian Population Theory and Indian Famine Policy in the
Nineteenth Century", Population Studies 30 (1): 5-14
Arnold, David & R. I. Moore (1991), Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (New Perspectives on
the Past), Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 164, ISBN 0631151192
Bhatia, B. M. (1991), Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India With
Special Reference to Food Problem, 18601990, Stosius Inc/Advent Books Division. Pp. 383, ISBN
8122002110
Dutt, Romesh Chunder (1900 (reprinted 2005)), 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 1402151152

Timeline of major famines in India during British rule (1765 to 1947)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia-This is a timeline of major famines on the Indian subcontinent
during the years of British rule in India from 1765 to 1947. The famines included here occurred both in
the princely states (regions administered by Indian rulers) and 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). 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 born.

Timeline
Chronological list of famines in India between 1765 and 1947 [1]

Name of
Year famine (if
any)

1769
70

Great
Bengal
Famine

British
territory

Bihar, Northern
and Central
Bengal

Madras city and

surrounding
areas

1782
83

1783
84

Chalisa
famine

1791
92

Doji bara
famine or
Skull
famine

Indian
kingdoms/Prince
ly states

Mortality

10 million (disputed as
excessive)

Kingdom of
Mysore

See below.

Delhi, Western
Oudh, Eastern
Punjab region,
Rajputana, and
Kashmir

Severe famine. Large

areas were depopulated.
Up to 11 million people
may have died during the
years 178284.[2]

Hyderabad,
Southern Maratha
country, Deccan,
Gujarat, and
Marwar

One of the most severe

famines known. People
died in such numbers that
they could not be
cremated or buried. It is
thought that 11 million
people may have died
during the years 178894.

[3]

1837
38

Agra
famine of
183738

Central Doab
and trans-Jumna
districts of the
North-Western
Provinces (later
Agra Province),
including Delhi
and Hissar

Upper Doab of
Agra; Delhi and
Eastern Rajputana
Hissar divisions
of the Punjab

1860
61

1865
66

Orissa
famine of
1866

Orissa (also
1867) and Bihar;
Bellary and
Ganjam districts
of Madras

1868
70

Rajputana
famine of
1869

Ajmer, Western
Agra, Eastern
Punjab

1873
74

Bihar
famine of
187374

1876
78

800,000 (disputed as
inadequate)

Great
Famine of
187678
(also
Southern

1 million

Rajputana

A large and generous relief

effort was organized by
the Bengal government.
There were no mortalities
during the famine.

Bihar

Madras and
Bombay

1.5 million (mostly in the

princely states of
Rajputana)

Mysore and
Hyderabad

5.25 million in British

territory. Mortality
unknown for princely
states.

India
famine of
187678)

1896
97

Indian
famine of
189697

Madras, Bombay
Northern and
Deccan, Bengal,
eastern Rajputana,
United
parts of Central
Provinces,
India and
Central
Hyderabad
Provinces

Between 6.1 million to

10.3 million (in total).[4]
1,000,000 (in British
territories).

Between 1.25 and 10

Hyderabad,
million people (in total).[4]
1899
Indian
Bombay, Central
[5]
Rajputana, Central
1,000,000 (in British

famine of Provinces, Berar,

India, Baroda,
territories). Mortality
1900 18991900
Ajmer
Kathiawar, Cutch,
unknown for princely
states.

1943
44

Bengal
famine of
1943

Bengal

11.5 million from

starvation; 3 million
including deaths from
epidemics.

Notes
1. ^ Imperial Gazetteer of India, volume III 1907, pp. 501-502
2. ^ Grove 2007, p. 80
3. ^ Grove 2007, p. 83
4. ^ a b Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts. 1. Verso, 2000. ISBN 1859847390
pg 7

5. ^ [http://www.theglobalist.com/dbweb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5516 The global

famine of 1877 and 1899

References- Famines
Ambirajan, S. (1976), "Malthusian Population Theory and Indian Famine Policy in the
Nineteenth Century", Population Studies 30 (1): 5-14
Arnold, David & R. I. Moore (1991), Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (New
Perspectives on the Past), Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 164, ISBN 0631151192
Bhatia, B. M. (1991), Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic
History of India With Special Reference to Food Problem, 18601990, Stosius
Inc/Advent Books Division. Pp. 383, ISBN 8122002110

Dutt, Romesh Chunder (1900 (reprinted 2005)), 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 1402151152
Dyson, Tim (1991), "On the Demography of South Asian Famines: Part I", Population
Studies 45 (1): 5-25, <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032Dyson, Tim (1991), "On the Demography of South Asian Famines: Part II", Population
Studies 45 (2): 279-297, <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032Dyson, Time (ed.) (1989), India's Historical Demography: Studies in Famine, Disease
and Society, Riverdale MD: The Riverdale Company. Pp. ix, 296
Famine Commission (1880), Report of the Indian Famine Commission, Part I,
Calcutta
Ghose, Ajit Kumar (1982), "Food Supply and Starvation: A Study of Famines with
Reference to the Indian Subcontinent", Oxford Economic Papers, New Series 34 (2):
368-389
Government of India (1867), Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into
the Famine in Bengal and Orissa in 1866, Volumes I, II, Calcutta
Grada, Oscar O. (1997), "Markets and famines: A simple test with Indian data",
Economic Letters 57: 241-244
Grove, Richard H. (2007), "The Great El Nino of 178993 and its Global
Consequences: Reconstructing an Extreme Climate Even in World Environmental
History", The Medieval History Journal 10 (1&2): 75-98,
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/097194580701000203>
Hall-Matthews, David (2008), "Inaccurate Conceptions: Disputed Measures of
Nutritional Needs and Famine Deaths in Colonial India", Modern Asian Studies
42 (1): 1-24, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X07002892>
Hardiman, David (1996), "Usuary, Dearth and Famine in Western India", Past and
Present (no. 152): 113-156
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
Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III (1907), The Indian Empire, Economic (Chapter X:
Famine, pp. 475502, Published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of
State for India in Council, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Pp. xxx, 1 map, 552.
Klein, Ira (1973), "Death in India, 1871-1921", The Journal of Asian Studies 32 (4):
639-659
McAlpin, Michelle B. (1983), "Famines, Epidemics, and Population Growth: The Case
of India", Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (2): 351-366
McAlpin, Michelle B. (1979), "Dearth, Famine, and Risk: The Changing Impact of
Crop Failures in Western India, 18701920", The Journal of Economic History 39 (1):
143-157
McGregor, Pat & Ian Cantley (1992), "A Test of Sen's Entitlement Hypothesis", The
Statistician 41 (3 Special Issue: Conference on Applied Statistics in Ireland, 1991):
335-341, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2348558.pdf>
Mellor, John W. & Sarah Gavian (1987), "Famine: Causes, Prevention, and Relief",
Science (New Series) 235 (4788): 539-545,
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1698676.pdf>
Owen, Nicholas (2008), The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism,
18851947 (Oxford Historical Monographs), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp.
300, ISBN 0199233012

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 0198284632
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 0521526639

Epidemics and Public Health

Banthia, Jayant & Tim Dyson (1999), "Smallpox in Nineteenth-Century India",

Population and Development Review 25 (4): 649-689, DOI 10.2307/172481
Caldwell, John C. (1998), "Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of
India", Population and Development Review 24 (4): 675-696, DOI 10.2307/2808021
Drayton, Richard, "Science, Medicine, and the British Empire", in Winks, Robin,
Oxford History of the British Empire: Historiography, Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001, 264-276, ISBN 0199246807
Derbyshire, I. D. (1987), "Economic Change and the Railways in North India, 18601914", Population Studies 21 (3): 521-545, DOI 10.2307/312641
Klein, Ira (1988), "Plague, Policy and Popular Unrest in British India", Modern Asian
Studies 22 (4): 723-755, DOI 10.2307/312523
Watts, Sheldon (1999), "British Development Policies and Malaria in India 1897-c.
1929", Past and Present (no. 165): 141-181, DOI 10.2307/651287
Wylie, Diana, "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, 2001, 277-289, ISBN 0199246807
Benefits of the British Rule in India By: Dr.Dipak Basu June 10, 2006
(The author is a Professor in International Economics in Nagasaki University, Japan)
A number of historians both India and foreign writers and historians have started justifying the empire
and even asking USA to take up the White Mans Burden to bring civilizations and justice to the dark
world of the dark skinned people. The views of the Western historians like Neil Ferguson or Michael
Ignatief are being reflected by their Indian counterparts like Triankar Roy, Dipak Lal, or even Man Mohan
Singh in his lecture in Oxford University recently. The surprising matter is that even the Sangha Parivar
writers like M.S.Menon, and Priyadarshi Dutta are also propagating the benefits that the British rule has
brought to India. Before the British came, India was one of the richest countries in the world. In 1800,
India, China and Egypt (and probably many of the kingdoms of central Africa) were economically more
developed than Britain. Indeed the British had nothing for sale that was of interest to the Indians or
Chinese. When the British left in 1947, India was poor and industrially backward. Britain did bring free
trade to India and China. Britain had extracted large surpluses from India, and forced it into a free-trade
pattern, which obliged India to export commodities and become a dumping ground for British
manufactures. Historians estimate that the net transfer of capital from India to Britain averaged 1.5
percent of GNP in the late nineteenth century. The wealth transfer was financed by a persistent trade
surplus of India, which was sent back to Britain or spend to expand the British Empire. Indias exportimport ratio was 172.5 percent in 1840-69, 148 percent in 1870-1912, and 133.4 percent in 1913-38. This
export orientation was a tool of colonial exploitation, and free trade a British ploy to force its
manufactures on India and crush domestic industry.Instead of enriching the world, the British Empire
impoverished it. The empire was run on the cheap. Instead of investing in the development of the
countries they ruled, the British survived by doing deals with indigenous elites to sustain their rule to
extract maximum amount of revenues for Britain itself, which the British historians now deny. Whether in
18th-centuryIndia, 19th-century Egypt or 20th-century Iraq, the story is the same. As long as taxes were

paid, the British cared little about "the rule of law". They turned a blind eye to Indian landlords who
extracted rent by coercion or indigo and opium - planters who had forced Indian farmers to cultivate and
their products were forced upon the Chinese. Unable to sell anything to the Chinese, Britain sent in its
gunboats, seizing Hong Kong and opening up a market for opium grown in India. Despotic repression
was fostered where it protected British interests.India is the prime example. Ruled by Muslims before the
British, India was a prosperous, rapidly commercializing society. The Jagat Seth, India's biggest banking
network and financier of the East India Company, rivaled the Bank of England in size. British rule
pauperized India. The British restricted Indian weavers' ability to trade freely and the result was a drastic
drop in living standards. Dhaka, now the capital of impoverished Bangladesh, was once a state-of-the-art
industrial city. Its population fell by half during the first century of British rule. Now, average Indian
incomes are barely a tenth of the British level in terms of real purchasing power. It is no coincidence that
200 years of British rule occurred in the intervening time. Rabindranath Tagore wrote The chronic want
of food and water, the lack of sanitation and medical help, the neglect of means of communication, the
poverty of educational provision, the all pervading spirit of depression that I have myself seen to prevail
in our villages after over a hundred years of British rule make me despair of its beneficence.
The impact of British rule in India: As Davis concludes: "If the history of British rule in India were to
be condensed to a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in Indias per-capita income from 1757 to
1947." (in Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino famines and the making of the Third World by M. Davis,
London, Verso Books, 2001) In fact, incomes may have declined by 50 percent in the last half of the 19th
century.
Shares of world GDP (percent)
1700

1820

1890

1952

China

23.1

32.4

13.2

5.2

India

22.6

15.7

11

3.8

Europe

23.3

26.6

40.3

29.7

Source: Davis, 2001

Destruction of agriculture: Karl Marx wrote in Consequences of British Rule in India,
England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of
reconstitution yet appearing. The British in East India accepted from their predecessors the department of
finance and of war, but they have neglected entirely that of public work s. There have been in Asia,
generally, from immemorial times, but three departments of Government; that of Finance, or the plunder
of the interior; that of War, or the plunder of the exterior; and, finally, the department of public works.
Climate and territorial conditions, especially the vast tracts of desert, extending from the Sahara, through
Arabia, Persia, India, and Tartary, to the most elevated Asiatic highlands, constituted artificial irrigation
by canals and water-works the basis of Oriental agriculture. Hence an economical function devolved upon
all Asiatic Governments, the function of providing public works. This artificial fertilization of the soil,
dependent on a Central Government, and immediately decaying with the neglect of irrigation and
drainage, explains the otherwise strange fact that we now find whole territories barren and desert that
were once brilliantly cultivated, as Palmyra, Petra, the ruins in Yemen, and large provinces of Egypt,
Persia, and Hindostan; it also explains how a single war of devastation has been able to depopulate a
country for centuries, and to strip it of all its civilization.
Destruction of self-sufficient rural economy:British steam and science uprooted, over the whole
surface of Hindostan, the union between agriculture and manufacturing industry. The third form of
destruction was the destruction of the self-sufficient village society of India. Under this simple form of
municipal government, the inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. These small
stereotype forms of social organism have been to the greater part dissolved, and are disappearing, not so
much through the brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer and the British soldier, as to the working
of English steam and English free trade. Those family-communities were based on domestic industry,
in that peculiar combination of hand-weaving, hands-spinning and hand-tilling agriculture, which gave
them self-supporting power. English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver

in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small communities, by
blowing up their economical basis
De-industrialization of India under the British:After destroying its agriculture British had embarked
upon the destruction of Indian industry. Several Indian historians have argued that British rule led to a deindustrialization of India. By the Act 11 and 12 William III, cap. 10, it was enacted that the wearing of
wrought silks and of printed or dyed calicoes from India, Persia and China should be prohibited, and a
penalty of 200 imposed on all persons having or selling the same. Similar laws were enacted under
George I, II and III, in consequence of the repeated lamentations of the afterward so enlightened British
manufacturers. And thus, during the greater part of the 18th century, Indian manufactures were generally
imported into England in order to he sold on the Continent, and to remain excluded from the English
market itself. Ramesh Chandra Dutt argued (in Economic History of India, London, 1987): India in the
eighteenth century was a great manufacturing as well as a great agricultural country, and the products of
the Indian loom supplied the markets of Asia and Europe. It is, unfortunately, true that the East India
Company and the British Parliament, following the selfish commercial policy of a hundred years ago,
discouraged Indian manufacturers in the early years of British rule in order to encourage the rising
manufactures of England. Their fixed policy, pursued during the last decades of the eighteenth century
and the first decades of the nineteenth, was to make India subservient to the industries of Great Britain,
and to make the Indian people grow raw produce only, in order to supply material for the looms and
manufactories of Great Britain. According to Karl Marx, However changing the political aspect of
Indias past must appear, its social condition has remained unaltered since its remotest antiquity, until the
first decennium of the 19th century. The handloom and the spinning wheel, producing their regular
myriads of spinners and weavers, were the pivots of the structure of that society. It was the British
intruder who broke up the Indian handloom and destroyed the spinning wheel. England began with
driving the Indian cottons from the European market; it then introduced twist into Hindostan, and in the
end inundated the very mother country of cotton with cottons. From 1818 to 1836 the export of twist
from Great Britain to India rose in the proportion of 1 to 5,200. In 1824 the export of British muslins to
India hardly amounted to 1,000,000 yards, while in 1837 it surpassed 64,000,000 of yards. But at the
same time the population of Dacca decreased from 150,000 inhabitants to 20,000. This decline of Indian
towns celebrated for their fabrics was by no means the worst consequence. There is a good deal of truth
in the deindustrialization argument. Moghul India did have a bigger industry than any other country,
which became a European colony, and was unique in being an industrial exporter in pre-colonial times. A
large part of the Moghul industry was destroyed in the course of British rule. The second blow to Indian
industry came from massive imports of cheap textiles from England after the Napoleonic wars. In the
period 1896-1913, imported piece goods supplied about 60 per cent of Indian cloth consumption, 45 and
the proportion was probably higher for most of the nineteenth century. Home spinning, which was a
spare-time activity of village women, was greatly reduced. It took India 130 years to manufacture textiles
and to eliminate British textile imports. India could probably have copied Lancashire's technology more
quickly if she had been allowed to impose a protective tariff in the way that was done in the USA and
France in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, but the British imposed a policy of free trade.
British imports entered India duty free, and when a small tariff was required for revenue purposes
Lancashire pressure led to the imposition of a corresponding excise duty on Indian products to prevent
them gaining a competitive advantage. This undoubtedly handicapped industrial development. If India
had been politically independent, her tax structure would probably have been different. In the 1880s,
Indian customs revenues were only 2.2 per cent of the trade turnover, i.e. the lowest ratio in any country.
In Brazil, by contrast, import duties at that period were 21 per cent of trade turnover. British rule had not
promoted industrialization in India either. Japan and China were not colonized by the British; they
remained independent. The Indian steel industry started fifteen years later than in China, where the first
steel mill was built at Hangyang in 1896. The first Japanese mill was built in 1898. In both China and
Japan the first steel mills (and the first textile mills) were government enterprises, whereas in India the
government did its best to promote imports from Britain. Until the end of the Napoleonic wars, cotton
manufactures had been Indias main export. They reached their peak in 1798, and in 1813 they still

amounted to 2 million, but thereafter they fell rapidly. Thirty years later, half of Indian imports were
cotton textiles from Manchester. This collapse in Indias main export caused a problem for the Company,
which had to find ways to convert its rupee revenue into resources transferable to the UK. The Company
therefore promoted exports of raw materials on a larger scale, including indigo, and opium, which were
traded against Chinese tea. These dope-peddling efforts provoked the Anglo-Chinese war of 1842 in
which the British drug-pushers won and forced China to accept more and more opium.
Financial Exploitation of India: Until 1898 India, like most Asian countries, was on the silver standard.
In 1898, India under British rule, had to adopt a gold exchange standard which tied the Rupee to Pound at
a fixed value of 15 to 1, thus forcing India to export more for smaller amount of British goods. This was
another kind of exploitation of the Indian people making them poorer and poorer. Another important
effect of foreign rule on the long-run growth potential of the economy was the fact that a large part of its
potential savings was siphoned abroad. There can be no denial that there was a substantial outflow, which
lasted for 190 years. If these funds had been invested in India they could have made a significant
contribution to raising income levels. The first generation of British rulers was rapacious. Clive took
quarter of a million Pounds for himself as well as a jagir worth 27,000 a year, the Viceroy received
25,000 a year, and governors 10,000. The starting salary in the engineering service was 420 a year or
about sixty-times the average income of the Indian labor force. From 1757 to 1919, India also had to meet
administrative expenses in London, first of the East India Company, and then of the India Office, as well
as other minor but irritatingly extraneous charges. The cost of British staff was raised by long home leave
in the UK, early retirement and lavish amenities in the form of subsidized housing, utilities, rest houses,
etc. Under the rule of the East India Company, official transfers to the UK rose gradually until they
reached about 3.5 million in 1856, the year before the mutiny. In addition, there were private
remittances. D. Naoroji, (in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, London, 1901) suggests that the
annual remittances including business profits from mainly India and to a limited extent from China were
already 6 million in 1838. R.P. Dutt argues that 'the spoliation of India was the hidden source of
accumulation which played an all important role in helping to make possible the Industrial Revolution in
England' (in Economic History of India, London, 1897)
In the twenty years 1835-54, Indias average annual balance on trade and bullion was favorable by about
4.5 million a year. During the period of direct British rule from 1858 to 1947, official transfers of funds
to the UK by the colonial government were called the Home Charges. They mainly represented debt
service, pensions, India Office expenses in the UK, purchases of military items and railway equipment.
Government procurement of civilian goods, armaments and shipping was carried out almost exclusively
in the UK. By the 1930s these home charges were in the range of 40 to 50 million a year. Some of these
flows would have occurred in a non-colonial economy, e.g. debt service on loans used to finance railway
development, but a large part of the debt was incurred as a result of colonial wars. Some government
expenditure was on imports, which an independent government would have bought from local
manufacturers. Of these official payments, we can legitimately consider service charges on nonproductive debt, pensions and furlough payments as a balance of payment drain due to colonialism. There
were also substantial private remittances by British officials in India either as savings or to meet
educational and other family charges in the UK. In the inter-war period, these amounted to about 10
million a year, and Naoroji estimated that they were running at the same level in 1887. These items were
clearly the result of colonial rule. In addition, there were dividend and interest remittances by shipping
and banking interests, plantations, and other British investors. The total drain due to government
pensions and leave payments, interest on non-railway official debt, private remittances for education and
savings, and a third commercial profits amounted to about 1.5 per cent of national income of undivided
India from 1921 to 1938 and was probably a little larger before that. Net investment was about 5 per cent
of national income at the end of British rule, so about a quarter of Indian savings were transferred out of
the economy, and foreign exchange was lost which could have paid for imports of capital goods. As a
consequence of this foreign drain the Indian balance of trade and bullion was always positive. In spite of
its constant favorable balance of trade, India acquired substantial debts. By1939 foreign assets in India
amounted to $2.8 billion, of which about $1.5 billion was government-bonded debt and the rest

represented direct investment (mainly tea, other plantations and the jute industry). India did not reduce its
foreign debt during the First World War as many other developing countries did. Instead, there were two
voluntary war gifts to the UK amounting to 150 million ($730 million). India also contributed one-anda-quarter million troops, which were financed from the Indian budget. The 'drain' of funds to England
continued in the interwar years because of home charges and profit remittances. There was also a small
outflow of British capital. In the depression of 1929-33, many developing countries defaulted on foreign
debt or froze dividend transfers, but this was not possible for India. The currency was kept at par with
sterling and devalued in 1931, but the decisions were based on British rather than Indian needs.
Furthermore, the salaries of civil servants remained at high level, and the burden of official transfers
increased in a period of falling prices. During the Second World War, India's international financial
position was transformed. Indian war finance was much more inflationary than in the UK and prices rose
threefold, so these local costs of troop support were extremely high in terms of Pound, as the exchange
rate remained unchanged. For the last fifty years of British rule there is no increase in per capita income.
The most noticeable change in the economy was the rise in population from about 170 million to 420
million from 1757 to 1947. Very little incentive was provided for investment and almost nothing was
done to promote technical change in agriculture. At the bottom of society the position of sharecropping
tenant and landless laborers remained wretched. Meanwhile Indian taxes funded Britain's Indian army,
which was used to expand the empire into Africa and Asia and which made a major contribution to
defending the same empire in two world wars--all at no cost to the 'home' country! Lord Salisbury said
India 'was an English barrack in the Oriental seas from which we may draw any number of troops without
paying for them'.
Man-Made Famines in British India:The British brought an unsympathetic and ruthless economic
agenda to India" and that "the creation of famine" was brought about by British "sequestration and export
of food for enhanced commercial gain." Three important factors caused devastating famines in India
under British rule. First, Indias indigenous textile industries were destroyed by Londons high tariffs and
the import of cheap British manufactured products, impoverishing millions of town dwellers, who were
forced into the countryside to compete for dwindling land. Second, Indias traditional granary reserve
system, designed to offset the impact of bad harvests, was dismantled. Third, Indias peasants were
pressured into growing crops for export, making them dependent on fluctuating world market prices for
their means of subsistence. As a result, tens of millions of people died of starvation. These famines were
not caused by shortages of food. They took place at the very same time that annual grain exports from
India were increasing. One third of the population of the then province of Bengal, which includes todays
Bangladesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and South Assam, were wiped out in the famine of 1770,
immediately after Bengal was occupied by the British Easy India Company, due to their inhuman tax
system. According to author Mike Davis, during the famine of 1876, "the newly constructed railroads,
lauded as institutional safeguards against famine, were instead used by merchants to ship grain
inventories from outlying drought stricken districts to central depots for hoarding...In Madras city,
overwhelmed by 100,000 drought refugees, famished peasants dropped dead in front of the troops
guarding pyramids of imported rice." The British refused to provide adequate relief for famine victims on
the grounds that this would encourage indolence. Sir Richard Temple, who was selected to organize
famine relief efforts in 1877, set the food allotment for starving Indians at 16 ounces of rice per day--less
than the diet for inmates at the Buchenwald concentration camp for the Jews in Hitlers Germany. British
disinclination to respond with urgency and vigor to food deficits resulted in a succession of about two
dozen appalling famines during the British occupation of India. These swept away tens of millions of
people. The frequency of famine showed a disconcerting increase in the nineteenth century, under the
British rule (in Famines in India, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1963). Very few would be aware of
the horrendous calamities inflicted on Indians by the British. The annual death rate in 1877 in British
labor camps during the Deccan famine was about 94%. Extraordinarily low population growth between
1870 and 1930 (due to famine, malnourishment-exacerbated disease and cholera, plague and influenza
epidemics) was due to this exploitative policy. In 1943 Bengal Famine in British-ruled India about 5
million people were perished, but it was never mentioned in the British history books, because it was

caused by a deliberate British scorched earth policy to deprive the Azad Hind Army and the Japanese to
receive any support from the local people. The annual death rate in India before 1920 was about 4.8% but
this declined to 3.5% by 1947 and is presently about 0.9%( http://countrystudies.us/india/32.htm). Using a
baseline expected annual death rate value of 1.0% and assuming an actual pre-1920 value of 4.8%
one can estimated that the avoidable (excess) mortality was about 0.6 billion during 1757-1837, 0.5
billion during 1837-1901 and 0.4 billion during 1901-1947. Thus the British rule of India was associated
with an excess (i.e. avoidable) mortality totaling 1.5 billion surely one of the greatest crimes in all of
human history. An extraordinary feature of the appalling record of British imperialism with respect to
genocide and mass, worldwide killing of huge numbers of people (by war disease and famine) is its
absence from public perception. There is no mention of famine in India or Bengal in the British textbooks
of history. New historians in India are now putting the blame on the victims. Meghnad Desai in his article
in Cambridge History of India puts the blame on the Indian speculators; Amartya Sen suggested (in
Ingredients of Famine Analysis, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol XCVI, 1981) that people in that
area had eaten too much to create the famine.
Conclusion: The progress made in India under British Rule like the coming of railways, Postal System,
Telegraphic communications, etc., were all undertaken by the British Administration to facilitate their
rule. The aim of British policy was to integrate the Indian economy with that of the British in way such
that India supplied Great Britain with cheap raw material for being manufactured into valued-added
(costly) finished products. It is not true that if India remained independent it could not have developed
railways or telegraphic system; Japan or Thailand was never colonized but they have today much better
infrastructure than that in India. India during the British rule was to provide a ready captive market for
British goods made from Indian raw materials. The resultant enrichment and industrial development was
to take place in Britain and not in India. Thus at the dawn of independence, India inherited an economy
that had the worst features of both the feudal and the industrial ages without the advantages of either. As
Rabindranath Tagore wrote in 1941, in his letter from the deathbed to British member of parliament
Mrs.Rothbone, that in the Soviet Union illiteracy was eradicated with two decades but in India even
after two centuries of British rule only 15 percent of the Indians were literate. Priyadarsi Dutta,
parliamentary secretary to Balbir Punj, the chairman of the BJPs think-tank, wrote in The Organizer, the
organ of the R.S.S on 28 May 2006, that the British rule was only a learning process emphasizing the
positive aspects of the British empire as written in the history text books in Britain. Thus, they are
suggesting that thousands of our heroes and heroines of the freedom struggle who had sacrificed their
lives to liberate India were all very stupid. This is the indication of cultural imperialism, which is bound
to take place in India along with the globalization, and the economic reforms put forward by no other
than the Anglo-American economists and policy-makers.
Other Books-(1) Famines and poverty in India - H. K. Mishra - 1991
(2)A history of Indian economic thought - Ajit Kumar Dasgupta - 1993 - Business & Economics - 206
pages. Page 61-... of location but on a principle stated by TE Ravenshaw, the Commissioner for
Cuttack, ... In his evidence to the Indian Famine Commission, 1898,
(3)Poverty and Hunger: Causes and Consequences - Ratan Das - 2006 - Social Science - 326 pagesLastly, the commission took evidence of Mr. Ravenshaw, the Governor. It was propagated earlier that Mr.
Ravenshaw failed to assess the gravity of the famine
(4)Economic history of Orissa - Nihar Ranjan Patnaik - 1997 - Orissa (India) - 389 pages
towards the end of November 1865 to assess the intensity of the famine in the hilly ... Ravenshaw
returned to Cuttack from his tour on the 31st January and ...
(5)Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation - Amartya Kumar Sen - 1983 - Social
Science - 257 pages-During the Orissa famine of 1865-6, Ravenshaw the Commissioner of Cuttack
Division, expressed disappointment that private trade did not bring much food from ...
(6)The Famine of 1896-1897 in Bengal: Availabilty Or Entitlement Crisis? Malabika Chakrabarti - 2004
- Business & Economics - 541 pages-orient_longman ISBN8125023895

(7)FHSP_A_332911 1612..1627- of the devastating famine of 1866, Ravenshaw had bitterly complained
that. No other province in the Presidency was so deficient of intelligent and public
...www.informaworld.com/index/902479339.pdf
(8) Pratibha India, April-June 2005; Vol XXII No.3) Jagannath Prasad Das- Going through Hells
I consider the three years I had spent in Kalahandi in a field job as Collector, forty years ago, as the most
rewarding for me. Today people are familiar with the name of Kalahandi as they are with Biafra and
Somalia, but forty years ago when I went there on a posting, it was the back of beyond even for Oriyas. It
was in 1965-66 that Kalahandi first came to national notice when a famine hit the district. For the first
time a Prime Minister visited this god-forsaken land. Since communication to this place was very poor,
Indira Gandhi had to come in a helicopter. Orissa had gone through a severe famine hundred years earlier
in 1866, when a third of its population had perished, and people said that it was going to happen again
after a century. The 1866 famine was a manmade disaster, for the administration had wrongly believed
that there was enough food grain available in Orissa and refused to stop export of grains or to bring grains
in, on government account. In Kalahandi in 1965, by the middle of August it was felt that a scarcity
situation was developing due to failure of rains. So I sent a report to Government. It is apprehended that
sufficient stocks of rice cannot be procured to meet the food situation this year if the dispatch of stocks
from the various railheads of this district is not completely stopped. I have restricted movement of food
grains outside the district and have also issued instructions to the railway stationmasters not to honour any
indent for dispatch of stocks from Kalahandi. The Government reply shows how higher-ups in
government do not understand the situation in the field: I have no doubt that there is more rice in your
district than you imagine and further, that the crops of the current year will suffice for the years supply.
You must on no account interfere with legitimate trade, either import or export.
This letter was not addressed to me but to the Collector of Balasore who had made a similar request a
hundred years earlier. I had come across this letter when I was researching for a book on 19th century
Orissa. The letter was written in 1865 by the British Commissioner Ravenshaw. The reply I got in 1965, a
hundred years later, was a little more detailed. It said: It had been decided by Government to continue
dispatches of rice from Kalahandi district. It is further decided that movement of rice through free trade
channels should not be restricted. The instructions issued to the civil supplies staff and the railways
authorities should be withdrawn forthwith.