A Cultural History of Famine

The term “food security” does not immediately signal research done in
humanities disciplines. It refers to a complex, contested issue, whose cur-
rency and significance are hardly debatable given present concerns about
environmental change, resource management, and sustainability.
The subject is thus largely studied within science and social science dis-
ciplines in current or very recent historical contexts. This book brings
together perspectives on food security and related environmental con-
cerns from experts in the disciplines of literary studies, history, science,
and social sciences. It allows readers to compare past and contemporary
attitudes towards the issue in India and Britain – the economic, social, and
environmental histories of these two nations have been closely connected
ever since British travellers began to visit India in the latter half of the six-
teenth century. The chapters in this book discuss themes such as climate,
harvest failure, trade, technological improvements, transport networks,
charity measures, and popular protest, which affected food security in
both countries from the seventeenth century onwards. The authors cover
a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, and their chap-
ters allow readers to understand and compare different methodologies as
well as different contexts of time and place relevant to the topic.
This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of eco-
nomic and social history, environmental history, literary studies, and South
Asian studies.

Ayesha Mukherjee is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at

the University of Exeter, UK.
Routledge Environmental Humanities
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Editorial Board
Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK
Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales, Australia
Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK
Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia
Georgina Endfield, Liverpool, UK
Jodi Frawley, University of Western Australia, Australia
Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia
Christina Gerhardt, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, USA
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Iain McCalman, University of Sydney, Australia
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Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, USA
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Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of
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A Cultural History of Famine
Food Security and the Environment in
India and Britain

Edited by
Ayesha Mukherjee
First published 2019
by Routledge
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Contents

List of figures vii

List of tables viii
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xii

Introduction: a cultural history of famine 1

A yes h a M u k h er j ee

PART I
Historical interpretations 19

1 Famine and food security in early modern England:

popular agency and the politics of dearth 21
Jo h n W alter

2 Subsistence crises and economic history: a study of

eighteenth-­century Bengal 37
R a j at  D atta

3 Climate signals, environment and livelihoods in the

long seventeenth century in India 52
V inita D amodaran , James Hamilton and
R ob  A llan

PART II
Roads and rivers 71

4 Famine chorography: Peter Mundy and the

Gujarat famine, 1630–32 73
A yes h a M u k h er j ee
vi   Contents
5 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity in early
colonial Bengal 94
U j j ayan B h attac h arya

PART III
Politics of climate and relief 111

6 Chaotic interruptions in the economy: droughts,

hurricanes and monsoons in Harriet Martineau’s
Illustrations of Political Economy 113
L esa S c h oll

7 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief in colonial

North India 129
S an j ay S h arma

PART IV
Contemporary voices and memories 149

8 Farming tales: narratives of farming and food

security in mid-­twentieth-century Britain 151
M ic h ael W inter

9 The economy of hunger: representing the Bengal

famine of 1943 167
A mlan D as  G u pta

10 Are we performing dearth or is dearth performing us,

in modern productions of William Shakespeare’s
Coriolanus? 185
J u lie H u dson

Bibliography 199
Index 223
Figures

2.1 Agricultural prices, 1768–72 46

2.2 Agricultural prices, 1785–89 47
2.3 Monthly rice prices in Midnapur, October 1769 to
September 1770 47
3.1 Geographical coverage of the tracks of English East India
Company (EIC) ships in 900 ship logbooks from
1788–1834 54
3.2 ENSO reconstructions: decadal trends in reconstructed
El Niño and La Niña event magnitude characteristics,
1525–2000 55
3.3 Plot for India for the period 1560–1760 which allows
identification of groupings and coincidences between
various occurrences and events born of both natural and
human causes 59
3.4 Map of famine areas in India, 1770–1825 65
4.1 Peter Mundy’s route from Surat to Agra 1630–31 84
Tables

I.1 Famine and dearth chronology 4

2.1 Subsistence crises in eighteenth-­century Bengal 40
2.2 Harvest damage in dearth and famine 45
2.3 Prices of rice (winter harvest) 48
3.1 Protracted ENSO episodes 56
5.1 Comparative prices of paddy and four sorts of rice in six
districts of Bengal in 1786 and 1787 99
5.2 Per rupee food prices at Dinajpur in 1786 and 1787 100
5.3 Bazar prices of grain for three years in the markets of
Calcutta 106
7.1 Poorhouse food rations 135
Contributors

Rob Allan leads the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the

Earth (ACRE) initiative at the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate
Science and Services. He is an expert on climatic variability and climate
change, especially with regard to the El Niño Southern Oscillation
(ENSO) phenomenon.
Ujjayan Bhattacharya is Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of
Arts at Vidyasagar University, in Midnapur, India. His current research
interests are focussed on the history of the Portuguese in early modern
Bengal, and on water management, floods, fiscal regimes, and the rural
economy in eighteenth-­century Bengal.
Vinita Damodaran is Professor of South Asian History and Director of the
Centre for World Environmental History at the University of Sussex.
She leads a project on the Botanical and Meteorological History of the Indian
Ocean, and has recently co-­edited East India Company and the Natural
World (2014), and Climate Change and the Humanities (2017).
Amlan Das Gupta is Professor of English and Director of the School of
Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. His research
areas are classical and early modern European literature and Digital
Humanities. He was Co-­Investigator on the AHRC project Famine and
Dearth in India and Britain, 1550–1800: Connected Cultural Histories of Food
Security.
Rajat Datta is Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is author of Society, Economy
and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal (2000), and has edited
Rethinking a Millennium: Perspectives on Indian History from the Eighth to the
Eighteenth Century (2008). His monograph Market, Subsistence and Trans-
ition in Early Modern India is forthcoming.
James Hamilton is a post-­graduate researcher who has worked for a
number of years with Professor Vinita Damodaran at the Centre for
World Environmental History at the University of Sussex. His primary
x   Contributors
areas of study are historical human, animal, and environment inter-
­relations in East Africa and India.
Julie Hudson completed her PhD at Warwick University in 2018, with a
thesis titled “The Environment on Stage: Scenery or Shapeshifter?” Her
publications include “ ‘If You Want to Be Green Hold Your Breath’:
Climate Change in British Theatre”, NTQ 111 (2012), and Food Policy
and the Environmental Credit Crunch: From Soup to Nuts (with Paul Dono-
van, 2013).
Ayesha Mukherjee is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English,
University of Exeter. She is author of Penury into Plenty: Dearth and the
Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England (2015), and was Principal
Investigator on the AHRC-­funded project Famine and Dearth in India and
Britain, 1550–1800: Connected Cultural Histories of Food Security.
Lesa Scholl is Head of Kathleen Lumley College, University of Adelaide.
Her publications include Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Profes-
sional Woman (2011), Hunger Movements in Early Victorian Literature:
Want, Riots, Migration (2016), and Medicine, Health and Being Human
(2018).
Sanjay Sharma is Professor of History at Ambedkar University Delhi. He
is author of Famine, Philanthropy and the Colonial State: North India in the
Early Nineteenth Century (2001), and his research focuses on the history
of famines in North India, notions of philanthropy, and indigenous sur-
vival practices during food shortages.
John Walter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Essex. His
publications include Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern
Society (with Roger Schofield, 1989), Understanding Popular Violence in the
English Revolution (1999), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society (with
Michael Braddick, 2001), Crowds and Popular Politics in early Modern Eng-
land (2006), and Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular
Political Culture in the English Revolution (2017).
Michael Winter, OBE, is Professor of Land Economy and Society in the
Department of Politics, University of Exeter. His research focuses on
the governance of sustainable agro-­food systems; historical and con-
temporary sociology of West Country agriculture; and farmer environ-
mental attitudes and decision-­making.
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, for
funding our project workshop, “Food Security and the Environment in
India and Britain” (2015), which first brought together the contributors
to this book. I am also grateful to the Smith School of Enterprise and the
Environment, University of Oxford, who provided us with a venue and
supported our workshop discussions in many ways. Thank you, all particip-
ants who contributed to the workshop. A Cultural History of Famine has
evolved from these discussions, and the exchanges and debates that con-
tinued beyond our first meeting. I am deeply grateful to colleagues who
have contributed chapters, for their sustained enthusiasm, time, and
patience.
At the University of Exeter, I would like to thank colleagues in the
Department of English, the Centre for South Asia Research, and the
Digital Humanities team; and at Jadavpur University and Aligarh Muslim
University, colleagues in the English and History departments and the
Institute of Persian Research. This book has benefited from their encour-
agement and support.
It has been a pleasure to work again with Routledge; many thanks, from
all contributors, to Leila Walker, Rebecca Brennan and Steve Turrington
for their wonderful and patient assistance.
Ayesha Mukherjee
Abbreviations

BCP Proceedings of the Board of Customs (WBSA)

BR Board of Revenue
BRC Bengal Revenue Consultations (British Library)
BRP (G) Proceedings of the Board of Revenue, Grain (WBSA)
BRP (M) Proceedings of the Board of Revenue, Miscellaneous (WBSA)
CCC Controlling Committee of Commerce
CCRM Controlling Committee of Revenue, Murshidabad
COA Commissioner’s Office, Allahabad
COF Commissioner’s Office, Faizabad
COR Commissioner’s Office, Rohilkhand
IOR India Office Records (British Library)
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
OIOC Oriental and India Office Collections (British Library)
PCR Provincial Council of Revenue
UPRAA Uttar Pradesh Regional Archives, Allahabad
WBSA West Bengal State Archives
Introduction
A cultural history of famine
Ayesha Mukherjee

In, arguably, his most macabre comment on famine, ʿAbd Al-H.amīd

Lāhawrī (d.1654), court historian of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan
(1592–1666), describing the effects of the notorious Gujarat famine of
1630–32, wrote:

[gosht-­i farzand-­rā shirin tar az mehr-­i ou midānistand]

The flesh of a son was considered sweeter than his love.

(Lāhawrī, I: 362)

This line was translated by Sir Henry Miers Elliot in his edition of excerpts
as “the flesh of a son was preferred to his love” (1875: 26). Elliot’s trans-
lation obscures, in my opinion, the deliberate poeticism of

(sweeter than his love),

and Lāhawrī’s self-­conscious shift to the poetic register of the macabre and
grotesque from the factual register of chronicling events. In early modern
accounts of famine, this kind of rhetorical shift is frequent, and cuts across
place, language, and literary mode or genre. Reports of famine-­induced
cannibalism and desperate forms of eating abound in travelogues, poems,
and chronicles, across time and space. Lāhawrī’s predecessor, Abul Fazl,
the court historian of Shah Jahan’s grandfather, the emperor Akbar,
described men eating each other in desperation during a famine
(1554–56) that had inaugurated Akbar’s reign (Fazl, 1907–39, II: 30). The
East India Company (EIC) factor Peter Mundy, whose recording of the
Gujarat famine during Shah Jahan’s reign will be discussed later in this
book, noticed people who looked like human “annatomies”, sifting
through the dung of travellers’ horses in hopes of finding undigested
grain (Mundy, 1907–36, II: 44). In quite a different context, Piero Campo-
resi’s famous studies of hunger (1989, 1996) give numerous examples,
2   Ayesha Mukherjee
from early modern Italy, of extreme forms of eating. One of Camporesi’s
examples is Giovan Battista Spaccini’s Cronaca modenese which described
how, in 1601 in the town of Reggio, neighbours discovered three young
boys, whose parents had fled the famine: “they found two of the sons
dead, and the third dying with straw in his mouth, and on the fire there
was a pot with straw inside which was being boiled in order to make it
softer for eating” (1919, vol. 2: 177; Camporesi, 1989: 85). After the four-­
year period of dearth and famine in 1590s England, the poetry anthology
Englands Parnassus (1600) personified Dearth and Famine as cannibals,
whose “greedie gorge” consumed their “owne deere babes”, as well as
their own flesh (256; Mukherjee, A., 2015: 1–3). A Cultural History of
Famine attends to such modes of representing famine and dearth, and
their historical contexts.
To regard such accounts as sensational disruptions of the narration of
factual evidence of famines would be to undermine the complex function
of the Mughal chronicle (or other literary writing) as a cultural document.
Lāhawrī was allegedly asked by Shah Jahan to model his chronicle on the
style of Abul Fazl. Thus, continuity of rhetorical tradition and style was as
important for Mughal imperial “self-­fashioning”1 as the consistent record-
ing of key events across a temporal continuum that connected emperors
to their ancestry. Yet, to return to Lāhawrī’s trope, there seem to be few
accounts of famine cannibalism which utilised the macabre and the grot-
esque to such devastatingly succinct effect. This was rhetorically achieved
by words that selectively evoked fundamental things in human life: flesh,
sweet, love, son. Readers were asked to imagine the unimaginable: in what
condition of physiological deprivation and mental aberration would the
flesh of your son taste sweeter than his love? The horror of famine was lit-
erally and physically tasted in this trope, which used ironic exaggeration to
signal the absolute breakdown of closest kinship ties and moral agency
among human beings. What is also underlined here is the realisation that,
beyond a point, famine sufferers, physiologically and mentally, inhabit a
different zone from the rest of humanity. When we encounter representa-
tions of hunger-­driven extremes, whether in Lāhawrī, or Spaccini, or – to
consider another representational mode and timeframe – in Zainul Abed-
in’s remarkable sketches of the 1943 Bengal famine (Sen, 1944), which
blended the horrific and the mundane, these demand extreme ways of
imagining human degradation and the breakdown of kinship, humanity,
and morality.2
Forms of representing famine, despite similarities in their rhetorical
strategies, are distinct and relate to their specific contexts. There are many
degrees of horror in the different types of famine representation and
reportage: not all are as brilliantly sensational as Lāhawrī. But even the
most factual kinds of reporting, such as official EIC correspondence, are
often emotive, beneath the surface of official structure. The sifting of fact
from fiction, in the strictest sense, is frequently difficult, because the
 Introduction   3
reporting itself is coloured by human perceptions, imagination, a sense of
duty or loyalty, and politics. In seeking to understand how “a cultural
history of famine” might be constituted, this book considers how famines
(and their remedies) have been imagined, or, for that matter, misunder-
stood or forgotten, as part of the construction of famine history. Famines
are not only about sensational extremities – they are also linked with
periods of dearth, in differing degrees, so that the point at which “dearth”
slips into “famine” can be highly context specific and tricky to identify or
generalise.3 Indeed, in human memory and in literary sources, famine and
dearth are often conceived as interchangeable conditions, as in the similar
personifications of Dearth and Famine in Englands Parnassus. Moreover,
habits of economy and mundane life work alongside conditions of dearth
and famine (Thirsk, 1967, 2007; Mukherjee, A., 2015: 145–94). Both con-
ditions affect social norms, patterns of economic exchange, political
behaviour, and the moral life of human beings. A Cultural History of Famine
thus calls for an approach that looks at, but also beyond, causalities, such
as climate change, or market prices, or political events like wars and rebel-
lions, and towards human responses in times of dearth and famine.

Time and space

Concerns about what we might today call “food security”, or the long-­term
availability, quality, and distribution of food, have a cultural history that
can be traced far back. This is not only a history of economics and agricul-
tural or technological development at points of time; it is equally a history
of human responses, resilience, and representations in the long term.4 In
this book, authors, whose expertise covers different disciplines, geograph-
ical areas, and time periods (from the early modern to the present day),
aim to stimulate readers to think about famine and food security as long-­
term questions, whose specific shapes have altered over time. The term
“food security” may have been invented in the twentieth century, but not
the problem itself or the debates about possible solutions.5 By bringing
together disciplinary perspectives on famine, the book highlights funda-
mental debates about historical, literary, and social science approaches to
the topic, and explores ways of connecting these perspectives. The authors
also contend with questions of geographical breadth and depth. In other
words, both spatial and temporal complexities affect the book’s approach
because food, famine, and dearth are not issues that are, or have been,
problematic for the “Third World” alone. The Western world too has a
long history of coping with food crises, which have impacted on the wider
world.6 We have elected to focus on India and Britain since the wider polit-
ical and cultural histories of the two nations, and their famine histories, in
particular, are closely connected.
Famine and dearth featured with remarkable persistence in the histo-
ries of early modern (sixteenth- to eighteenth-­century) Britain and India.
4   Ayesha Mukherjee
Table I.1 Famine and dearth chronology

India Britain

1554–56 1555–57
1596–1600 1596–1600
1630–32 1630–32
– 1647–49
1658–63 1658–61
1691–97 1693–97
– 1709–10
– 1727–28
1732–37 –
1752–55 1756–57
1767–70 –
1777–79 –
1783–84 –
1787–93 –

Sources: Hoskins (1964, 1968); Walter and Schofield (1989); Habib (1999); Moosvi (1987,
2008); Datta (2000); Grove and Chapell (2000).

In Britain, their effects and intensities varied locally, but in some cases (for
example, in the 1590s) the crises were experienced across the nation
(Hoskins, 1968; Appleby, 1978; Walter, 1989). In India, famines occurred
throughout the Mughal period in the Northern provinces, Bengal, and
the south (Habib, 1999; Moosvi, 2008; Datta, 2000; Subrahmanyam, 1990).
The famine chronologies of the two countries in this early period are
uncannily parallel, matched almost decade by decade, until the mid-­
eighteenth century. After this, famines seem to no longer afflict Britain,
although they continue unabated in India, as Walter and Datta demon-
strate in the first two chapters of this book.
It may be argued that the reasons for this remarkable parallelism were
climatic: the links between severe El Niño events, the coldest periods of
the Little Ice Age, and droughts in tropical regions, have long been the
subject of investigation and debate among climate scientists and historians
(Grove, 1994; Grove and Chapell, 2000).7 Table I.1 shows the most acute
points of crisis, as represented in the existing historiography of famine
and dearth for both nations, covering the period 1550–1800.8 Climatolo-
gists have shown that difficult winters and poor crops in European regions
have coincided with El Niño events, and archival data uncovered by histor-
ians suggests that from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, a
number of El Niños had wider and more intense global effects than those
of the twentieth century (Lamb, 1977; Grove and Chappell, 2000, 7–20;
Quinn et al., 1987; Ortlieb, 1998). But whether coincidence is evidence
remains a question. As Damodaran and her colleagues argue, in Chapter
3, finding answers to such questions requires “more detailed mining of
documentary and paleo sources” across time and space. Nevertheless, the
 Introduction   5
congruence, this book suggests, shapes cultural evidence regarding famine
and dearth, especially if we consider this in relation to socio-­economic
exchanges between the selected nations.

Forms of exchange
Grove and Chappell comment that

it was at precisely the time that the European powers strengthened

their commercial and revenue grip on Asia, that the stress of increas-
ingly severe climatic events with associated disease and famine con-
tributed to the vulnerability of Asian agricultural societies, especially
between 1590 and 1800.
(2000: 13)

They suggest that these stresses may have facilitated European expansion.
India and Britain thus offer a useful case study of how pre-­colonial experi-
ences of famine and dearth impacted on later crises during the course of
colonial expansion, when famines and their memories had arguably
become more remote in Britain itself, and were perceived as issues affect-
ing its distant colonies.9 Despite differences in scale and local ecologies,
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, both contexts register
chronic instabilities, sharp contrasts, and fears generated by the close
proximity of plenty and dearth. National and local economies struggled to
build physical infrastructures to cope with uncertainties of climate and
create a secure agricultural environment. This was a formative period for
cultural interactions between the two countries. British emissaries trav-
elled frequently through famine-­ridden Indian terrain along with local
migrants displaced by shortages. One such example is Peter Mundy, dis-
cussed in Chapter 4, who travelled from Surat to Agra and back during the
Gujarat famine (1630–32), possibly caused by moderate El Niños which
led to acute drought in this and other Asian regions (Quinn, 1992; Grove
and Chappell, 2000: 15). The experience of constant mobility and unset-
tledness was shared by Company men and local populations. Indeed,
British travellers to India were familiar with negative ecological con-
sequences of dearth-­driven vagrancy and displacement in their own
national context (see, for example, Fumerton, 2006).
Conditions for the exchange and interaction of cultural understandings
of famine, dearth, and ecological ethics were thus created. Early modern
and pre-­colonial contexts of what these economic and environmental
issues meant, and how they were addressed across seemingly separate cul-
tural zones, are yet to be properly examined. At the same time, despite the
existence of many valuable historical studies of famines in Indian colonial
and post-­colonial contexts, there is a need for more reflection, first, on
how this shared early modern and pre-­colonial history of famine and
6   Ayesha Mukherjee
dearth may have impacted colonial famine and food security policies; and,
second, on how internal British concerns about food shortage, in key con-
texts such as the institution of the Poor Laws, or post-­war food shortages,
may have played out in relation to remedial (or exploitative) actions
undertaken in the colonies. In its engagement with such questions, this
book is concerned with the ways in which the past relates to the present:
how we might understand the lessons of the past (temporally remote con-
texts), or learn from the experience of other communities (geographically
remote contexts).
Comprehensive coverage of five centuries of famine history, in two coun-
tries, and in a single volume, is therefore not the purpose here. The chap-
ters engage with methodological debates, and bring fresh perspectives often
by highlighting regional, micro-­level conditions which had a wider impact.
In Part I, “Historical interpretations”, John Walter offers a vital overview of
responses to famine and dearth in early modern England, arguing that the
“infrapolitics” of the people tried to maintain, in the face of economic and
intellectual change and exchange, forms of social and governmental
responses offering protection against the crisis of dearth. In his reassessment
of moral economy and the English social order, Walter points out that,
despite demographic evidence of crisis mortality and the “silent violence” of
dearth, famine was regionally selective; and the reciprocities of “common-
wealth”, rather than profits of commodity, continued to be significant in the
mental world of early modern society, especially during harvest failure. In
this context, he examines the role of popular protest, characterised by a dis-
ciplined (frequently symbolic) violence, preferring negotiation, rather than
reflecting the elite stereotypes of thievery, random violence, and disorder. In
the next chapter, Rajat Datta shifts focus from the social and moral economy
of food crisis to questions of evaluating “subsistence crises” as economic
history; the context also shifts from early modern England to pre-­colonial
Bengal. However, Datta, like Walter, raises wider interpretative issues. He
explores how we might construct an economic history of subsistence crises,
which are often seen as severe dislocations in the “normal” run of things,
whose economic consequences were considered “excess” points – excess
starvation, excess mortality, and so on. Addressing a different kind of (histo-
riographic) silence around the interims between excess points, Datta
demonstrates how a serious scarcity (even if not a full blown famine) dis-
mantled economic structures of subsistence in pre-­colonial systems, reliant
on production, circulation, and consumption. Based on his data on
eighteenth-­century Bengal, Datta advocates constructing an economic
history of subsistence focused on variables such as market networks, money,
exchange mechanisms, and price fluctuations.
While Walter’s and Datta’s introductions to the moral and subsistence
economies suggest ways of understanding human agency during famine
and dearth, in Chapter 3, Vinita Damodaran, James Hamilton, and
Rob Allan consider another possible agent – global climate change. By
 Introduction   7
examining the links between climate signals, environment, and livelihoods
in the long seventeenth century in India, this chapter assesses the claim
that the synchronicity of the many disorders of mid-­seventeenth century
Eurasia was no accident but associated with climatic conditions between
1610 and the winter of 1708–09. These conditions, as the historian Geof-
frey Parker (2013) argued, led to natural forces combining in this period
to generate cooler temperatures and greater climatic variability, reduced
solar energy, increased volcanic activity, and a greater frequency of El
Niño. The El Niño southern oscillation also disrupted the Asian monsoons
and North Amer­ican rainfall. The idea of a “global crisis” in the seven-
teenth century, as Damodaran and her colleagues affirm, is here to stay,
but their chapter queries whether climate change was the primary agent
of seventeenth-­century demographic change, and makes the case for an
approach which would focus on regional and national differences and the
resilience of agricultural production in the face of population pressure,
exogenous shocks, and environmental change.
As Part I of the book sets up fundamental debates about historical inter-
pretations of food crises, their causes, and human responses, it also dis-
cusses particular instances of famine in early modern Britain and India
– such as the famines in Gujarat in the 1630s, in Bengal in the 1770s, in
England in the 1590s and early seventeenth century. The chapters that
follow revisit some of these examples in more detail, and explore ways of
combining or modifying the approaches critically examined in the first
Part. Part II on “Roads and rivers” pays close attention to regional con-
texts, taking up the intersecting issues of navigation, settlement, mobility,
and representation in the selected local environments, and considering
their impact on agriculture, food supply, and distribution. Chapter 4
attends to individual, local, and state-­guided discourses of famine and
dearth in seventeenth-­century India and Britain, which expressed con-
cerns about climate, place, and mobility. The chapter thus focuses on per-
ceptions of space and place as driving factors for British and Mughal
understandings of alternating dearth and plenty in India. East India
Company men, such as Peter Mundy, were constantly on the move,
whether by sea or on land, and their accounts of travel and economic crisis
in India, Ayesha Mukherjee argues, adapted the developing modes of rep-
resenting domestic mobility in Britain. Using Mundy’s text and narration
during the notorious Gujarat famine of 1630–32 as a case study, the
chapter shows how themes and principles in British domestic travel writing
familiar to Mundy were adapted by him to describe the topography,
climate, politics, local resilience, and travel experiences during the Gujarat
famine. This is compared with the politics of representing the famine in
Mughal official and courtly accounts. Mukherjee suggests that, in the
process of narrating subsistence crises, seventeenth-­century English travel
journals and Mughal chronicles recorded the beginnings of a global dis-
course of food security, which must be recovered in its own terms.
8   Ayesha Mukherjee
In Chapter 5, Ujjayan Bhattacharya observes that rivers in the region of
Bengal, by the nature of their seasonal flooding, and volatile change in
their courses of flow, determined the scale of ecological impact on agrar-
ian society. Changes in the direction of river flow altered ecological zones,
creating new deltaic spaces for expansion of agriculture, rendering the
older zones moribund. He identifies that channels of the Damodar in
1770 and the Teesta and Karatoya in 1787–89 had gone through rapid
changes in character, causing significant ecological shifts in western and
north-­eastern Bengal, and argues that long-­term changes resulting from
the considerable impact of inundations and the system of watercourses
were crucial for food security and the evolution of new agrarian settle-
ments. Moving on from the well-­known Bengal famine of 1770, Bhattach-
arya focuses on official records and government responses to the flood
and famine situations in 1787 and 1790s. Though we may argue the evid-
ence of climate change, on a global scale, still needs to be fully discovered
and collated, the case of Bengal in 1787–90 suggests that this process can
be aided by considering the micro-­dynamics of responses to specific cli-
matic events, evidenced in holdings of local archives which allow us to
reconstruct famine conditions from below. Bhattacharya’s detailed recon-
struction demonstrates how changes in local climate and ecology, market
exchanges, and conflicted notions of moral economy (from the
Company’s perspective) worked in tandem to determine the precise shape
of a food crisis.

Discourses, narratives, and memories

On the one hand, the issues raised in “Roads and rivers” link back to ques-
tions of commercial, environmental, and moral response (raised in Part
I), with an emphasis on the recovery of local detail through varied (often
conflicting) sources – local administration records, travel accounts, impe-
rial histories, and popular culture. On the other hand, the chapters point
forward to the tensions between state-­centred responses to famine situ-
ations and localised perceptions and experiences of mobility and terrain
in such situations. Such tensions surrounding the coping practices and
moral responsibilities of the state and individuals appear to have reached
a climactic point in the colonial period, by which time, as Walter shows,
famines had all but disappeared from England; nevertheless, food and
subsistence crises took increasingly complex shapes in colonies like India.
Part III, “Politics of climate and relief ”, shows how this altered balance of
famine events shaped discourses of extreme weather, political economy,
charity, and relief in the colonial period. Food and consumption were
embedded in ideas of justice, charity, and their administration in colonial
India and Victorian Britain. These ideas had their roots in the early
modern history of the poor law and charity, resurrecting categorisations of
the “deserving and undeserving poor” in Britain, discussed in earlier
 Introduction   9
chapters by Walter and Mukherjee. The two chapters here consider the
disjunctions, competing voices, and disruptions that resulted when prin-
ciples of political economy, charity, and relief were codified and put into
practice in the context of famine during a period of colonisation.
Lesa Scholl closely reads selections from a relatively lesser known text,
Harriet Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34). Both lauded
and condemned for her mission to make the precepts of classical political
economy accessible to all, Martineau was established by her contemporar-
ies as a proponent of political economy. However, Scholl argues, such ren-
derings must be interrogated through the strong counter-­narratives of
chaos, dispossession, and conflict within the series that unflinchingly chal-
lenge the tenets espoused by early political economists. This chapter draws
out Martineau’s more complex relationship to political economy by focus-
ing on the dialogic nature of her tales – the way she uses the chaotic force
of weather disturbances to critique the seeming stability of economic
theory. Martineau’s characters (in the 1833 volumes French Wines and Pol-
itics, Sowers Not Reapers, and Cinnamon and Pearls) who express political
economy’s ideals became increasingly problematic figures in the light of
environmental devastation. The intervention of uncontrollable climatic
forces of the hurricane, drought, and monsoon mirrored, in these narrat-
ives, hunger and economic turbulence and, most crucially, as the chapter
demonstrates, spoke to the visceral trauma of the community. In the next
chapter, Sanjay Sharma describes a different kind of subversive force
which resisted the state’s construction of power and authority through
famine relief measures in colonial North India. Poorhouses, established in
India in the second half of the nineteenth century, provided opportunities
for colonial administrators to devise and test their principles of govern-
ance on a subject population located in a defined space. One of these
principles, the provision of cooked food for recipients of famine relief,
became the desirable norm and means of measuring real need. Poor-
houses (like prisons) were enclosed sites in the colonial administrative
imagination. In these spaces, Sharma points out, the inmates’ acceptance
or rejection of cooked food meant to meet their subsistence and nutri-
tional requirements became a way of enforcing authority and reiterating
humanitarian claims. Sharma’s close examination of official narratives
reveals conflicting voices at different layers of the colonial regime –
district-­level administrators, higher bureaucracy, policy-­makers, and
medical practitioners – whose views were often couched in the language of
political economy and prevailing ideas of nutrition, disease, and health.
Despite humanitarian rhetoric, this chapter argues, colonial poorhouses
were designed to minimise responsibility, discourage indolence, and
ensure discipline, eventually producing a discourse of governance that
reinforced administrative and paternal hierarchies.
Prototypes of such institutions existed in nineteenth-­century industrial-
ising Britain, where debates on how to set the poor to work, dissuade
10   Ayesha Mukherjee
indolence, and curb vagrancy and misuse of charity were at the heart of
the New Poor Law and establishment of workhouses.10 Similar questions
informed the agenda of the colonial state in famine situations in a
different context where death and disease pushed the state to assume
greater responsibility for its subject population (Arnold, 1993). These
responsibilities were shaped by conflicts between the tenets of market-­
driven political economy (already under critical scrutiny in the 1830s, as
Scholl’s account of Martineau demonstrates) and the imperatives of
humanitarian concern (cf. Brewis, 2010). Sharma and Scholl reveal how
both were tested by climatic disruptions and attitudes to charity and relief.
They illustrate contradictory pulls, as relief/reform policies sought to dis-
cipline needy subjects and also strengthen the claims of welfare and
responsibility by the colonial state, which were, in turn, contested by the
state’s own functionaries.
In the final Part IV of the book, “Contemporary voices and memories”,
narratives of the notorious Bengal famine of 1943 are placed alongside the
politics of farming in war-­time and post-­war Britain. From the 1870s to
1939, Britain’s food security depended on its ability to import food from
around the world, as a colonial and a trading nation, while domestic agri-
culture suffered. The 1939–45 war began with Britain producing barely a
third of its own food, after 20 years of agricultural depression and a rapid
process of restructuring land ownership and occupation. Farmers remem-
bered the “great betrayal” of the government’s sudden removal of the pro-
tectionist price policy in 1920, and it was clear that increasing food
production, vital to the war effort, would require firm assurances that the
government would not walk away from the agricultural industry at the end
of the war. However, the nature of the state–agriculture relationship in the
post-­war period was deeply contested; some advocated land nationalisa-
tion, others a new social contract between the state and farmers, and many
a market solution with price guarantees (Friedmann, 1978; Cox et al.,
1986, 1991; Griffiths, 2010; Brassley et al., 2012). In Chapter 8, Michael
Winter argues that out of this turbulence and debate, the idea of family
farming emerged in literary representations in the 1930s to the 1950s, as a
political project (to circumvent class-­based politics of landed capitalist
agriculture), as a socio-­economic reality (resulting from the fixity of land-­
holding structures, mechanisation, and the declining size of the hired
labour force), and as a cultural ideal. The chapter examines the works of
three farming writers (George Henderson, Clifton Reynolds, and Frances
Donaldson) who related their personal experiences of farming. These
“working farmers” set out to inspire, inform, and warn would-­be farmers.
Two of them (Henderson and Reynolds) also had strongly articulated
political and moral views of agriculture which, in different ways, were at
odds with the corporatist policy “consensus” between government and the
leading political representatives of the farming industry that emerged in
this period. Their divergent voices offer an insight into the drive for food
 Introduction   11
security in war-­time and post-­war Britain, and Winter’s analysis suggests
that alternative visions for agriculture were articulated in the 1940s and
1950s, even if these have often been forgotten in conventional agrarian
histories of the period.
At the same time, attempts to sustain the war effort created extra-
ordinary challenges in one of Britain’s colonies, as Amlan Das Gupta
notes in his study of literary representations of the 1943 Bengal famine,
in Chapter 9. This infamous famine, which occurred in pre-­partition
British India during the Second World War after the Japanese occupa-
tion of Burma, reportedly resulted in the death of more than 3 million
people, largely from rural Bengal.11 The winter rice crop of 1942 was
affected by a cyclone in October, followed by flooding and fungus dis-
eases. Rice imports from Burma were cut off. The wholesale price of rice
rose from Rs 13/14 per maund in December 1942 to Rs 37 in August
1943, while in the retail market of Dhaka rice was being sold at Rs 105
per maund in October (Sen, 1981a: 52–5). Amartya Sen identifies the
period from March to November 1943 as the phase of maximum starva-
tion deaths (55). The famine was perceived and experienced differently
in the districts and in Calcutta. District officers described hunger
marches, property crimes, paddy looting, towns filling with starving
beggars, and the disposal of dead bodies becoming a problem for civic
authorities. In Calcutta, while official policy developed schemes to
ensure essential food supplies in the “industrial area”, rural destitutes
arrived in masses, filled the city streets, relying on personal or ad hoc
charity until relief for them became official policy in August. It was
estimated that, just for October, starving and sick migrants amounted to
at least 100,000, while 3363 unattended dead bodies were disposed of by
relief organisers (Sen, 1981a: 57; Famine Inquiry Commission, 1945a;
The Calcutta Gazette, various Supplements12).
The famine is near enough in time to endure in memory and oral testi-
monies: it also inspired volumes of literature, including some of the most
powerful works of modern Bengali fiction. Das Gupta examines ethical
questions that arose from the experience of deprivation, migration, and
death during this famine, many of which related to long-­established norms
of conduct within settled communities. While Winter demonstrates how
the active intervention of communal enterprise, such as family farming,
tried to address the challenge of food security in Britain, Das Gupta
queries the extent to which what P. R. Greenough called “the implicit
rules for crisis conduct” in settled communities were able – if at all – to
come to terms with the enormity of the events of 1943–44 in India. The
chapter revisits these events through their representations in memorial
reconstructions of people who lived through the crisis, and in works by
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (1894–1950) and Manik Bandyopadhyay
(1908–56), major authors in the modern Bengali literary canon, who felt
they had (in Das Gupta’s terms) “a duty of response”.
12   Ayesha Mukherjee
Winter and Das Gupta both raise, in distinct but not unrelated contexts,
the question of public memory and understanding of food shortage. This
is also studied in the final chapter by Julie Hudson, who examines the
reception of food security issues in modern performances of an early
modern English play to understand how present audiences might read,
own, or disown past environmental and food production challenges.
Hudson asks to what extent people living in the resource-­intensive soci-
eties typical of developed countries in the present day recognise that the
persistent over-­use of natural resources by an expanding global population
is a recipe for being “performed by” dearth. Her chapter explores the
relationship between people and food (in)security from an eco-­theatrical
perspective, in the context of live theatrical performance in conventional
theatre spaces. It considers plays that first came to the stage at a time of
dearth and that also directly thematised dearth, finally focusing on Shake-
speare’s Coriolanus, written c.1608/09 and first performed c.1609/10,
drawing on experiences of the Midlands Revolt – a series of peasant riots
over enclosure in 1607. As Hudson explores modern performance archives
for evidence of food insecurity awareness, her discussion reflects on
whether the ecological threads of meaning, embedded in noteworthy food
insecurity scenes in the play texts, are fully included or occluded in
modern-­day productions. She argues that modern production teams and
audiences can thus be seen as an indicator of societal readiness (or other-
wise) for the cultural and behavioural changes needed to fend off the next
dearth, or famine.
The chronological arrangement of chapters in A Cultural History of
Famine is thus used to interrogate the perception that hunger and famine
have a neat teleological trajectory, allowing us to chart the agricultural and
socio-­economic “progress” of affected nations. Famines may have dis-
appeared from England after the seventeenth century, but it may be
argued that they were merely displaced to other areas over which Britain
had evolved administrative sway, and responsibilities of governance. More-
over, there are cases and contexts, as Cameron Muir recently noted, where
agriculture has repeatedly served as a “strategic asset”, and progress
defined by increasing yields has “failed to address the inequitable distribu-
tion of food and the long-­term health of the environment” (2014: 185). As
many of our authors show, local concerns with agricultural development,
issues arising from the application of colonial European technologies,
ideologies, and remedies, and pressures of global markets and policies,
have at different points in history created complexities (exacerbated
during severe famines) that make linear narratives of agricultural and eco-
nomic progress problematic.13 It may be still more difficult to deduce from
the charting of agricultural and socio-­economic progress a different model
of development – of social memory and moral consciousness, where
modern understandings of hunger, famine, and welfare ideologies are
seen as “improvements” upon the past.
 Introduction   13
In his study of the modern history of hunger, James Vernon tracks the
transformation of “hunger” from the late-­eighteenth to the mid-­twentieth
centuries. He argues that the political economy of Smith and Malthus
“established hunger as an avoidable, man-­made phenomenon”, as
opposed to the early modern understanding of it as a “curse of nature or
providence”. This laid the ground for neo-­Malthusian arguments blaming
the continuation of famine on “the laziness and moral weakness of the
hungry”; and there emerged what he terms “the humanitarian discovery
of hunger” in British liberal politics. Nationalists in Ireland and India, and
the suffragettes and the unemployed in Britain, stimulated sympathy by
turning hunger into an object of political outrage and “a symbol of the
failure of British liberalism” and colonial states (Vernon, 2007: 273).14
Social and nutritional scientists evolved techniques to measure hunger
and its social costs, and proposed reforms of social welfare (ibid.: 118–58;
cf. Gangulee, 1940; Bourne, 1943); and, Vernon sums up, “Humanitari-
ans, political activists, and social and nutritional scientists subsequently
fostered a more democratic social view of hunger as the responsibility of
society as a whole” (2007: 274). However, early modern or pre-­colonial
providential accounts of famine were simultaneously open to both
manipulation by the authorities and to challenges by the hungry, destitute,
and unemployed; and the motivations of charitable and humanitarian
activity have been underpinned by complex and frequently contested
political desires.15 This destabilises the notion of “more democratic” ideas
of welfare and social responsibility developing over time. Jenny Edkins’
observation, that the human desire for certainty and completeness “drives
the discursive and social practices surrounding famine relief and food aid”
and the technologising of modern famines (2000: 156), is notable because
it was precisely the desire for certain ends, connected to discourses of
power and authority, that many early modern discursive practices sur-
rounding famine and dearth were engaged in debating and resisting. Do
famines persist, and remain tied to violence and power relations, due to
an unproductive solidifying of discourses of certain ends in the course
of time?
It is useful to consider the role of memory in this regard: the memorial-
ising of past hunger was a crucial tactic in criticisms of colonial govern-
ance and in the evolution of post-­war British social democracy, still used in
the later decades of the twentieth century (Vernon, 2007: 236–71; cf.
Webster, 1982; Thorpe, 1992: 4; Baxendale and Pawling, 1996). Vernon
quotes from Bessie Braddock, the first female MP of Liverpool, speaking
eloquently in the House of Commons in November 1947 (incidentally,
three months after Indian independence, and three years after the Bengal
famine) to celebrate the demise of the abhorred Poor Law: “Let us
remember the queues outside the Poor Law relief offices, the destitute
people, badly clothed, badly shod, lining up with their prams … for the
week’s rations of black treacle and bread” (Hansard, Commons, 1947: vol.
14   Ayesha Mukherjee
444, col. 1632). While Braddock’s rhetorical emphasis on memory may
have aimed to legitimise the gains (however precarious) of social demo-
cracy and the labour movement, it is also worth drawing attention to her
equal emphasis on forgetting, which comes after a caveat about ensuring
the continued efficacy of the new schemes:

I hope that the working class movement will be able now to forget the
horrors of the past in the joy of realising that we are living in a country
that is going to produce for the benefit of the citizens as a whole.
(Ibid.: col. 1636)

One hopes there might have been some irony here, in this call to memory
to serve the latent desire of forgetting, at a moment when the horrors of
famine smarted afresh among citizens of a recently relinquished colonial
state.
Indeed, the famine in Bengal received strikingly scant attention in
Britain (though the Indian national press and its special correspondents
reported it vividly16) where focus had shifted to the “humanitarian crisis”
and acute food shortages in occupied Europe (Walker, 1941; Famine
Relief Committee, 1942, 1943). However, the Bengal famine became the
first site of nutritional experimentation with the notorious F-­Treatment
(intravenous administering of protein hydrolysates) which, after its spec-
tacular failure in Bengal, was used again for emergency feeding during the
“Hunger Winter” (1944–45) in Holland, where it also failed (Drummond,
1946, 1948; van der Zee, 1982). In Belsen, the apparatus triggered
patients’ memories of the implements of torture, and apparently, the starv-
ing, in both contexts, wanted food and not “capsules”. This, too, was not a
straightforward matter because, as a Times of India special correspondent,
complaining of woefully inadequate medical treatment in relief camps,
reported on 23 November 1943, “Improved food supplies may for a time
wreak havoc because once a certain stage of emaciation has been reached
long treatment is essential before a person can assimilate solid food.” The
correspondent added that the majority of the starving reacted against
treatments as far as their strength permitted, tried to run away from the
hospitals, “and sell the very sheets that cover them for a meal of rice – a
meal which is likely to kill them” (4). In the same month, the Bengali
newspaper Jugāntar (“New Age”) published regular counts of sick and
dying destitutes in local hospitals, reports of parliamentary discussions,
and subversive cartoons (7: 47 (6 November 1943), 48 (7 November 1943),
49 (8 November 1943), 52 (11 November 1943), 75 (4 December 1943)).
The newspaper’s weekly comic strip called Śeẏāl Pand.it (“Learned Fox”)
produced a parody titled Cāñdāpusht.a! (“Plumped by Charity”) on 6
November 1943. The Learned Fox, a familiar figure of Bengali oral tales,
could be used in political parodies to satirise the “cunning” of colonial
rulers or of those who were seen to imbibe this through blind emulation.17
 Introduction   15
Śeẏāl Pand.it appeared in this cartoon series as an ambivalent and clever
trickster. In the 6 November version, a pair of skeletal and scruffy-­looking
stray cats, one with a harmonium strapped round his neck, appear below
Śeẏāl Pand.it’s window. They sing a song of complaint in rhyming verse:
they claim they can no longer bear the pangs of hunger (
[jat.harer jwālā sahenā ār]) and are prepared to sing in praise of
Śeẏāl for a good meal ( / [khābār
āge balore dādā/jai Śeẏāler jai]). At the top left corner of the frame, Śeẏāl ’s
snout is just visible as he peers out of the window and dumps a pile of left-
over fish bones into the bin below. The cats dive in and gorge themselves,
having eked out this charitable donation from the proverbial trickster
himself by means of their sycophantic singing. The final frame shows the
cats prostrated by the bin with bulging bellies; they sing out a warning,
that if they ask for such charity when they are hungry again (
; [khete paini bole cāñdā/cāile punarbār]), they will
be thrown out by the scruff of their necks, or simply beaten (
/ [galā dhākkā debe kimbā/sreph lāgābe mār]) (Jugantar,
7.47 (6 November 1943): 7).18 A week later, on 11 November, another car-
icature appeared, this time more visibly on centre front page, above a
report on the Commons debate on the famine.19 The cartoon, titled
“ [Famine in Parliament]”, showed an abandoned parlia-
ment session, with empty seats and a few scattered figures weeping help-
lessly into their handkerchiefs. Signs in the background say “Members:
600” and “Present: 35”. A placard lies flat on the table which reads
“ [Special Session for the Famine
in Bengal]” (Jugāntar, 7.52 (11 November 1943): 1). Such representations
do not simply suggest nationalist outrage and demand for welfare from a
colonial state that appeared brutally forgetful, but a concerted scrutiny
and interrogation of the paradoxes driving this famine, often with self-­
directed irony.
Amidst the contesting perspectives of relief workers, doctors, nutrition
scientists, journalists, cartoonists, nationalists, and politicians, the expecta-
tion of a magic solution was sharply satirised in a sketch in the 7 Novem-
ber 1943 edition of The Hindustan Times. The illustration showed
half-­naked skeletal figures of natives queuing before a rotund officer
(strangely reminiscent, despite his modern suit, of Oliver Twist’s Mr
Bumble), who, elevated upon a stool, holds a large bottle in one hand,
and with the other administers drops of the miraculous medicine straight
into open starving mouths, with a look of benevolent assuredness. At the
other end of this production line, the bodies of the starving emerge trans-
formed into a state of obesity. Behind the official, in a corner, a Chinese
man in traditional dress holds out his hand, with a speech bubble, “Spare
one for me, Brother”. The caption above the sketch mockingly reported
that “masses of walking skeletons” in Bengal would be turned into “living
masses of flesh” by means of “Vitamin ‘A’ pills … coming from London”.
16   Ayesha Mukherjee
Meanwhile, in Britain, the controversies of post-­war food rationing and
austerity policy and practice were imminent (Zweiniger-­Bargielowska,
2000), and old and familiar arguments about “cultures of dependency”,
“loss of self-­reliance”, and “the value of work” were about to resurface in
ways that might be worthy of representation in the mode of Dickensian
macabre. Perhaps the value of our shared ghosts of famines past lies in
their capacity to recall lessons in food insecurity that are yet to be learnt,
and to suggest that “hunger’s demise” is not only a slow but an
uncertain end.

Notes
1 I use the term “self-­fashioning” in Stephen Greenblatt’s sense of the “fashion-
ing of human identity as a manipulable, artful process” (1980: 2). While Green-
blatt and others have applied this to English and European contexts in
particular, it is also applicable (bearing in mind cultural specificities) to literary
contexts outside Europe.
2 As the Bengali journalist Tushar Kanti Ghosh observed while reporting on the
1943 Bengal famine, “A child here or there, dead or dying from starvation, has
been removed from the pavement. Had the child parents? … What hunger can
do to break the most sacred and loving ties well-­fed people cannot imagine”
(1944: 35).
3 See Datta, Chapter 2 of this book, where he itemises degrees of shortage across
the eighteenth century, for Bengal; Bhattacharya, Chapter 5, identifies the
Company official’s call for state relief as the indicator marking the turning
point from acute dearth to a famine situation. On the issues that arise while
attempting distinctions, especially in the early modern world, where precise
data is hard to find, see Hoskins (1964); Walter and Schofield (1989).
4 In the early modern English context, for example, the history and literature of
famine and dearth was shaped by wider social issues, such as marriages, kinship
patterns, formal welfare provision through poor laws, informal structures of
charity, household management, and popular protest (Kussmaul, 1985: 1–30;
Wrigley and Schofield, 1981: 421–2; Wrightson, 1980: 176–91; Sharpe, 1998: 62;
Hindle, 2004: 21; 2008; Mukherjee, A., 2015).
5 The changing definitions of “food security” can be traced through the follow-
ing documents. It was defined in 1974 in the Universal Declaration on the Eradica-
tion of Hunger and Malnutrition at the first World Food Conference convened by
the UN. For further definitions that have evolved since, see World Food Summits
(FAO, 1996 and 2002), Declaration of the World Summit on Food Security (FAO,
2009), FAO et al., The State of Food Insecurity in the World (2012).
6 On European famines, there are recent, thought-­provoking overviews by
Cormac Ó Gráda (2010, 2015), and Alfani and Ó Gráda (2017). On famines as
accelerators of disparity and the creation of the “Third World”, see David
Arnold (1988) and Mike Davis (2002).
7 A recent investigation of the documentation of famine and dearth in historical
and literary sources corroborates this striking correlation between India and
Britain across two and a half centuries: Famine and Dearth (2016).
8 On famine mortality and climate in India, post-­1800, see especially the figures
in Davis (2002: 2, 247).
9 On the better-­known nineteenth-­century famines, see Davis, 2002; Arnold,
1988, 1993; Sharma, 2001; Mukherjee, U., 2013. The experience of food
 Introduction   17
shortage, however, did not disappear from Britain, as demonstrated in studies
of the history of hunger (Newman, 1990, rev. 1995: 213–80; Schofield in
Rotberg and Rabb, 1985: 67–93; Scholl, 2016; Vernon, 2007).
10 Among many studies of this topic, see reflections in Driver (1993) and Englan-
der (2013).
11 The figure is similar to the estimated deaths in Gujarat in the early 1630s,
though considerably less than the estimated deaths of 10 million in Bengal
during the dearth and famine years of 1769–72.
12 See especially The Calcutta Gazette, Supplements, 1943: 13 (1 April), pp. 295–300,
14 (8 April), pp. 319–22, 15 (15 April), pp. 353–6, 16 (22 April), pp. 379–98; 17
(29 April), pp. 509–10, 27 (8 July), pp. 1333–6, 34 (26 August), pp. 1501–4, 36 (16
September), pp. 1529–34).
13 In the collection of essays, Hunger in History, Kates and Millman suggest a
“middle ground” approach which seeks “hunger’s demise”, while acknow-
ledging that “further progress will require fundamental change in structures,
institutions, and values” (1995: 406). The question is whether the fundamental
values that define progress itself need to change.
14 For other arguments on the emergence of hunger as a moral imperative, see
Laqueur, 1989; Haskell, 1992; Boltanski, 1999: 170–92; Edkins, 2000.
15 See useful discussion on humanitarian action and desire in Boltanski,
esp. 188–90.
16 The Statesman newspaper in Calcutta published some of the earliest photo-
graphs (22 August 1943), and some of the special correspondents’ narratives
were printed as books: Freda Bedi, Bengal Lamenting (1944); K. Santhanam, The
Cry of Distress (1944); Santosh Kumar Chaterjee, The Starving Millions (1944).
An account of the famine, The Bengal Tragedy, by the editor of Jugāntar and
Amrita Bazar Patrika, Tushar Kanti Ghosh, was also published in 1944. As Ghosh
complained, despite the rapidly increasing deaths, “not a mouse stirs in
London or Washington” (1944: 35).
17 See, for example, the well-­known Bengali author Bankim Chandra Chattopad-
hyay’s dark parody of the creation of the modern Bengali intellectual (imbued,
by the “redbearded savant” Creator, with “slyness from the fox”, among other
qualities) in his essay Anukaran (“Imitation”, 1872), in Bankim Rachanavali, II:
198–207.
18 On ways in which “local town humour” drew upon a Bengali satirical literary
tradition of self-­directed irony, see Kaviraj, 2000.
19 The Jugāntar report, titled “ :
[India Matters in the Commons Session: Questions to Mr Amery [Secretary of
State for India] regarding the famine]”, summarised the discussion in the House
of Commons on 11 November 1943 (see Hansard, Commons, 1943, vol. 393, cols.
1278–81, nos. 40–4).
Part I
Historical interpretations
1 Famine and food security in
early modern England
Popular agency and the politics
of dearth
John Walter

Famine had been a recurring reality in medieval England, and it was an

ever-­present fear in early modern (sixteenth- and seventeenth-­century)
England. A state that lacked a standing army and professional police force
feared the disorder that dearth was inevitably thought to bring in a world
in which, it was proverbially believed, “hunger will break through stone
walls” (Tilley, 1950: 333). Nevertheless, despite demographic evidence of
the reality of crisis mortality, England in this period did not experience a
breakdown in the social order. Famine was regionally selective and of
diminishing impact after the crisis of 1622/23; a social economy con-
tinued to operate in which for the fortunate a preference for food security
was written into many economic relationships; the reciprocities of
“commonwealth”, not the profits of commodity, retained diminishing, but
at times of harvest failure, continuing importance in the mental and norm-
ative world of early modern society, upholding the importance of charity
and informal relief and regulating, to some degree, an economy in which
rising agricultural productivity underwrote a surprisingly responsive system
of crisis relief. Famously (and controversially) a moral economy shared
between Crown and crowd meant that popular protests were fewer than
expected and that in their disciplined exercise of (often symbolic) viol-
ence and preference for negotiation they failed to conform to the elite-­
inspired stereotype of collective theft with violence. In offering an overview
of responses to problems of food security in early modern England, this
chapter argues for the importance of popular agency in the politics of
dearth in maintaining in the face of economic and social change forms of
societal and governmental responses that offered protection against sub-
sistence crises.

Famine and social and economic change in early

modern England
In 1965, Peter Laslett famously asked: did the English peasant really
starve? (Laslett, 1965). Like elsewhere in Europe, England had a history of
famine which extended back into the Middle Ages. An imbalance between
22   John Walter
the pressure of population growth and an insufficiently responsive food
supply precipitated the Great Famine of 1315–17. This was perhaps the
worst subsistence crisis in England’s recorded history in which an estim-
ated half a million people, something like 10 per cent of the population,
died (Ó Gráda, 2015: 9–5; Dyer, 1998: 61). Renewed population growth,
accelerating by the later sixteenth century, caused renewed subsistence
crises. These peaked nationally in the 1590s, when in the harvest year
1596/97, a year which witnessed the most severe increase in food prices
for the entire period 1541–1871, mortality was some 25 per cent above
trend, and continued in some regions into the 1620s (Walter and
Schofield, 1989: 34).
Subsequent work has shown, however, that the answer to Laslett’s ori-
ginal question was more complicated and nuanced than once thought. By
the period at which parochial registration of vital events begins (the mid-­
sixteenth century), years of high food prices were already not always years
of mortality crises.1 Famine had always been regionally pronounced. It
became increasingly so. For example, in the crisis of 1596/97, only a little
under a fifth of parishes under observation registered mortality crises
(Wrigley and Schofield, 1981: 319–35, 645–93).2 By the time of the next
major crisis, in 1623–24, communities registering harvest-­related mortality
crises were now confined to the northern section of England’s highland
zone (north Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland) (Appleby, 1978;
Hoyle, 2010). Thus, by the mid-­seventeenth century, England’s experience
diverged from other famine-­prone regions in the British Isles, in Scotland
and Ireland and in continental Europe as the relationship between harvest
failure and crisis mortality weakened. Despite three successive years of
harvest failure, the death rate was actually below trend in the later 1640s,
and this despite England being engaged in civil war. Although there was
evidence of widespread suffering among the region’s poor, even those
areas scarred by crises of subsistence were now free of such crises, includ-
ing the previously vulnerable north-­west, which were no longer registering
crises of subsistence (Healey, 2014). By the “hungry 1690s”, a period of
harvest-­related crisis throughout Europe, the relationship between high
food prices and mortality in England had become muted. In a decade with
some of the sharpest falls in a 300 year index of real wages, death rates
never rose more than 6 per cent above, and actually fell below, trend in
the years at the end of that decade (Walter and Schofield, 1989: 35–6).
If England escaped famine, then in the longer term economic changes
played the larger role in explaining that escape. Improvements in agricul-
tural productivity, storage and distribution, helped to lift the threat of
national famines by stabilising food prices and moderating the exogenous
shock of extreme weather events (Wrightson, 2000). By the mid-­
seventeenth century, better crop mixes had broken the symmetrical price
structure in which harvest failure usually brought a sharp increase in
the price of all grains (Appleby, 1979). At the same time, expanding
 Famine in early modern England   23
i­nternational trade made it possible to access foreign, notably east Euro-
pean, grain (Zins, 1972; Federowicz, 1980).
But in the short run this was a period marked by paradox. In a trans-
itional period, economic change undermined traditional practices whose
logic had in part been to ensure resilience in agricultural output. The
increasing commercialisation of agriculture and consequent commodity
relations undercut practices designed to secure subsistence security and so
exposed producers and consumers to economic, as well as “natural”, risk.
Thus, economic change, while ultimately increasing agricultural produc-
tivity to the point that later seventeenth century England could become a
net exporter of grain, also increased the vulnerability of some regions. That
famine was most marked and lasted longest in England’s highland, above
all north-­western, zone was a product of new patterns of regional special-
isation attendant upon agrarian capitalism. Years of harvest failure, penal-
ising the region’s focus on livestock production and dependence on
bought-­in grain, brought a collapse in trade entitlements (Appleby, 1978).
Nationally, the growth in the number of land-­poor and landless now
forced to buy their food in the market made food security a pressing
problem, making them more vulnerable to the doubling or even trebling
of food prices that harvest failure brought in this period of transition.
At the same time, a more gradual change, which emphasised the eco-
nomic imperative in relationships between landlord and tenant, master and
employees, producers and consumers, threatened to undercut traditional
practices that had offered the harvest-­sensitive access to food independent
of the market. In altering the calculus of the rates of exchange embedded
within these relationships, this weakened resources on which the harvest-­
sensitive had been able to draw to meet the challenge of harvest failure.
For an increasing number, poverty and landlessness threatened their very
participation in these circuits of exchange. At the same time, a challenge
to traditional thinking about the role of charity and hospitality also threat-
ened to deny the poor what protection these had offered in the face of
harvest failure. All of these changes took place gradually and none of
them were universally complete by the end of the early modern period
(Waddell, 2012). In the face of these changes it was popular pressure
within the politics of subsistence that was important in maintaining rela-
tionships and strategies by which the harvest sensitive could continue to
access food at times of harvest failure.

Food security, risk insurance and the social economy

of dearth
If famine, defined demographically as subsistence crises, was absent at an
early date from many areas in England, and no longer even a regional
problem after the mid-­seventeenth century, this did not mean that the fear
of famine had receded. Although the death rate proved surprisingly
24   John Walter
unresponsive in the crisis of the 1690s, it was not until the mid-­1740s that
the link between prices and mortality finally disappeared. Harvest failure
remained a recurring risk, one whose occurrence could be anticipated but
never accurately predicted (Hoskins, 1964, 1968; Harrison, 1971). Denied
the twenty-­twenty vision of the historian’s hindsight, it was therefore the
memory of past famines (and, for a society that knew its bible, biblical
famines) that informed the thinking of both early modern government
and people about the problem of food security.
The harvest was the heartbeat of the early modern economy and
society. Its economic consequences were extensive in a pre-­industrialised
economy where agriculture was the major source of income for the
majority of the population and the harvest the major determinant of levels
of demand for non-­agricultural production. It determined levels of pros-
perity and poverty. Chroniclers (and individuals) remembered and
recorded events by reference to past famines, while almanacs and prover-
bial lore claimed to offer ways of predicting future scarcity. Diarists and
writers of annals anxiously noted unusual weather patterns – in the tem-
perate zone, in what has been called the Little Ice Age, it was predomi-
nantly cold springs and wet summers, rather than drought, that delayed
and damaged the harvest. In a society which prayed “give us this day our
daily bread” and where bread remained literally the staff of life, contem-
poraries recorded with alarm spiralling prices in the market. In a discourse
of dearth, poets and dramatists reflected the psychic hold harvest failure
had on contemporaries and the threat hunger posed to both individuals
and society (Mukherjee, A., 2015).
Contemporaries were sensitive to the role played by the weather in cre-
ating scarcity, but both government and people focussed more on the role
of human agency, in causing dearth and threatening or ameliorating
famine. In this period, as both the church and its puritan critics preached,
extreme weather was believed to be a providentialist intervention by an
angry God intended to punish human failings and to call the people to
repentance and reformation (Walsham, 1999). But if the weather caused
scarcity, both government and people believed it was human action that
threatened to turn scarcity into famine. High food prices were believed to
be the result of covetousness and corrupt practices in the storing, move-
ment and marketing of grain. These contravened laws to police the grain
market and disregarded the moral code that sought to uphold, in the face
of changing economic imperatives, a Christian ethic that was meant to
regulate personal and communal relationships. This held that it was a
God-­given duty to place poor before profit.3 Reinforced by civic human-
ism, the protean idea of society and polity as a commonwealth made mon-
archs and magistrates responsible for the well-­being of fellow men and
women. Hence, harvest failure in early modern England was the focus of a
politics of subsistence in which both the causes and consequences of
dearth (and even the discourses within which this politics was conducted)
 Famine in early modern England   25
were contested. Thus, it was contemporary beliefs about the causes and
character of dearth that informed policies and practices to prevent or
ameliorate famine.
At the beginning of the early modern period, there was a surprising
degree of consensus between government and people about the causes of
dearth and the policies for its prevention and mitigation. Both subscribed
to an explanation of dearth that moralised its causes. They placed the
emphasis on malpractices in the marketing of grain by those the govern-
ment labelled “greedy cormorants” that produced, in the contemporary
phrase, “want amidst plenty”. E. P. Thompson famously wrote about the
“moral economy” of the eighteenth-­century crowd, “a popular consensus
as to what were legitimate and what were illegitimate practices” in the mar-
keting and processing of grain which “can be said to constitute the moral
economy of the poor” (Thompson, 1971: 78–9). In the early modern
period, this was a view of the proper ordering of the economy shared by
both government and people.
Nevertheless, differing priorities meant that there was always a potential
tension in the relationship between government and people over the ques-
tion of food security. For governments and for elites, who continued to
believe that harvest failure automatically threatened to mobilise “the
many-­headed monster” of the people in “revolts of the belly”, questions of
food security remained central to the maintenance of the political and
social order. For the poor and harvest-­sensitive, the threat of hunger in
years of harvest failure (with its causal link to trade depression) ensured
that food security remained a pressing problem. Over time, there was a
shift in government economic policy in pursuit of national food security
from prohibitive to permissive, permitting enclosure and land re-­
organisation in agriculture and promoting a free market in grain. This
increased tensions between government and people.
Given the recurring reality of harvest failure, food security was problem-
atic in a society where surpluses offered a narrow margin between suffi-
ciency and want, where the storage of grain was problematic, and the
possibilities of carry-­over from good to bad years therefore limited. That
harvest time was usually a time of higher wages, better food and extrava-
gant commensality in food and drink made the inversion of harvest failure
harder to bear. In the face of the threat of famine, contemporaries had to
pursue a range of survival strategies. Food substitution – trading down in
grains and making use of grain substitutes, such as lentils and beans,
usually used as animal feed – was perhaps the most common adaptive
strategy. As a contemporary proverb had it, “hunger setteth his first foot
into the horse manger” (Harrison, 1587: 133). But the result was that it
was the cheapest grains that recorded the highest rise in prices.
Doubtless, the poor were driven to eat foods otherwise proscribed by
the contemporary dietary code. But in comparison with other famine-­
prone societies, and particularly England’s Celtic neighbours, we know
26   John Walter
less about the tradition of “need foods”. This perhaps reflects the earlier
escape from famine in England. That bread was baked from a meal
ground from amongst other things from acorns and roots offers some
evidence of their use (Camporesi, 1989; Lucas, 1959; Mukherjee, A., 2015:
162–3; Platt, 1596: A4r, B2r, C1v; Sayce, 1953/54). It also serves as a
reminder that dearth and famine were also experienced as a cultural
shock. Early modern England fell into the broader north European farina-
ceous dietary zone in which bread formed the largest part of the daily diet
in a Christian culture in which people prayed, “give us this day our daily
bread”. Given the intimate relationship between human identity and
culturally valorised foods, complaints from the poor about being forced to
consume food normally fed to animals, or breaking unwritten, but
important, taboos on eating pets, to eat cats and dogs, as well as reports of
cannibalism in past famines, served to express the people’s anger at their
treatment and to underscore the unnaturalness of their condition (The
National Archives, SP 12/188/47; Thomas, 1983: 115–16; Marvin, 1998).
Food security was measured on a cultural as well as a calorific scale.
Food security and risk-­insurance informed many of what can be seen as
traditional subsistence practices that were to be labelled by later agricul-
tural improvers as inefficient. For example, the logic of open-­field agri-
culture with communal organisation of the agricultural calendar and
farming practices, crop diversification and dispersal of individual holdings
in multiples strips across all soil types and sowing seasons, might be seen
in terms of a subsistence-­sufficiency orientation. Now thought to be poten-
tially more productive than contemporary critics and earlier historians
thought, traditional agricultural practice sought the minimisation of risk,
rather than the maximisation of profit (Walter, 1989: 93–4).
Beyond this, a variety of societal practices within what might be called
the social economy of dearth offered some insulation against harvest
failure, providing varying degrees of privileged access to food independent
of the market. Within this social economy, rates of exchange in what
would now be seen as economic relations reflected their value as forms of
“life insurance”. To the extent they survived the shock of harvest failure,
all offered a degree of protection against the failure in exchange entitle-
ments that Amartya Sen has argued prevents the poor from securing food,
even in famines in which it was human action, rather than absolute scar-
city, that caused problems of food availability (Sen, 1981a). The access to
food these practices offered meant that even in commercialising eco-
nomies like early modern England the impact of dearth cannot simply be
read off from the indices of wage rates and price series.
Within the manorial system, the “right” of the poor to glean for grain
after the harvest and of skilled specialists in husbandry to cultivate small
amounts of land on which to grow food or to a share of the animals they
raised were valuable perquisites. More generally, the ability to purchase
food at concessionary, “farm-­gate” prices, to take wages partly in kind, or
 Famine in early modern England   27
for live-­in servants in husbandry (perhaps some 40 per cent of the rural
labour force) to be fed at their employer’s table, mitigated the impact of
dearth. Credit, in which the social credit of the recipient often determined
its availability, might also allow some to ride out the crisis of harvest
failure: rent remittance or carry-­over of arrears for fortunate tenants, or
neighbourly loans in kind for others. Food could be exchanged on credit
for later repayment or future labour (Walter, 1989: 96–105, 112).
Informal relief was also important and potentially available to more
people. The provision of grain or bread in times of dearth was part of an
expected relationship between elite and poor, in a society in which in which
the importance of charity was upheld by the church and claims to liberality
and magnanimity were considered a defining characteristic of their status by
members of the landed class (Heal, 1990; Heal and Holmes, 1994). Prompt-
ings of church and conscience, as well as government recommendations for
the gentry to return to their estates to exercise hospitality among their
tenants and the poor, upheld charity as a Christian duty. Though we should
not mistake prescription of noble charity as evidence for its practice, it was
apparently more common in years of harvest failure, and where it was prac-
ticed examples suggest that in conditions of dearth its value to the harvest-­
sensitive could be very important (Walter, 1989: 106–10).
The continuing importance of charity, insistently urged in preaching
campaigns ordered by the government in years of harvest failure, help to
explain why, for example, in years of dearth there was some loosening of
prohibitions on begging. Similarly, the ordering of collective ceremonies
of repentance and (weekly) fasting to propitiate a jealous God, the primum
mobile of weather shocks, was also designed to save grain with which to feed
the poor (Hindle, 2001; Walter, 1989: 112–13). Such actions were doubt-
less intended as symbolic statements intended to assert social cohesion in
the face of the stark inequalities that harvest failure revealed. But that the
government expected to be able to recommend days when households
should fast and on which householders should invite their poorer neigh-
bours to eat with them underlines the continuing force of such ideas. By
its very nature, informal relief is hard to quantify, but examples multiplied
in years of dearth, and some indication of its overall importance is sug-
gested by the fact that up until the later eighteenth century charity
perhaps provided as much relief as the poor law (Slack, 1990: 41–4).
It was a contemporary trope, to be found in a literature of complaint
that ran from popular verse to godly sermons, that compared to a previous
(and mythical) golden age charity was in decline. Perhaps it had been ever
thus. But while some contemporaries believed this, moralists and govern-
ments continued to urge the importance of charity in combatting dearth.
In years of dearth the people were then able to exploit the social consen-
sus, upheld by the actions of the state and the preachings of the church,
that required the rich to relieve the poor. In a period in which some
­questioned the appropriateness of indiscriminatory aid, and where there
28   John Walter
was a trend towards making its application both discretionary and discrim-
inatory, popular pressure drew on the force of such ideas to help the
propertied “remember” their Christian duties (and past food crises) at a
moment of maximum pressure on their own resources. That such
entreaties appealed to commonly-­held norms made them harder to resist.
But there were additional sanctions. In the mental world of early modern
England, it was still widely believed that God would intervene to punish
those who failed to relieve the poor. Divine judgements on covetous and
greedy hoarders of grain were the subject of both sermons and popular
ballads. Their common message was that God hears and answers “the
poor’s moan” (Walter, 2001).
Appeals for relief couched in the language of moral obligation could take
a variety of forms. Wherever food was in circulation, for example the market
place or mill (or even at household doors at meal times), this created sens-
itive sites where public grumbling by the poor could air their grievances and
bring pressure to bear on the controllers of surpluses. Contemporary descrip-
tions of market places in conditions of scarcity record the disorderly snatch-
ing and unruliness and verbal spats between sellers and frustrated purchasers
and hint at the latent violence present there. Grumbling critical of the magis-
trates’ inactivity or the rich’s lack of charity might shade into verbal or written
threats, while petitions also hinted at the threat of violence which – of course
– the petitioners claimed to want to prevent (Walter, 2001: 128–46). The cir-
culation of written libels, what E. P. Thompson called the “crime of ano-
nymity”, left in sensitive sites like the local parish church, allowed threats of
violence to be made more explicit (Thompson, 1975). As Hugh Platt, author
of Sundry New and Artificial Remedies against Famine counselled, if Christian
charity was not sufficient reason to remember the poor,

yet reason and civill policy might prevaile so much with us for our
selves and those which are deare unto us, that we should not stay so
long until our neighbours flames take holde of our owne houses, nor
try the extremities that hunger, and famine may work amongst us.
(Platt, 1596: A3v)

Such threats had to be negotiated by controllers of food surpluses in years

of dearth when tensions were high and protection for property holders
limited and in a society where the church and state continued to under-
write the right to subsistence in language stressing both compassion and
obligation.

The politics of harvest failure: protest, popular

agency and state intervention
The micro-­politics of dearth might secure the defence of the protection
afforded by relationships and practice within the social economy locally.
 Famine in early modern England   29
But if the poor and harvest-­sensitive were not to starve then this needed a
redistribution of surplus in quantities that required the active intervention
of authorities. It was fear of the political threat that hunger posed to the
social and political order that gave the people their political leverage. That
the poor would riot in the face of harvest failure was a commonplace in
early modern society. “Nothing will sooner lead men to sedition than
dearth of victuals”, observed Elizabeth I’s leading minister (Walter, 1989:
76). “Necessity hath no law” ran a popular proverb (Tilley, 1950: 493).
This was a statement seemingly validated in this period by the evidence of
a sharp increase in prosecuted crime in years of harvest failure. These
thefts of often pathetically small amounts of food by vulnerable men and
women probably underestimated the “dark figure” of appropriation occur-
ring in years of dearth, reflecting as they did an uneasy balance between
the desire to use the sanction of the law to protect property against the
need to avoid the unpopularity that recourse to law threatened (Walter
and Wrightson, 1976: 24–5; Lawson, 1986). But they offered an uncom-
fortable reminder of the belief, once strong in medieval scholastic circles
but occasionally surfacing in this period, that hunger and a God-­given
right to subsistence dissolved rights of property (Swanson, 1997).
It was the threat that hunger would lead to revolt which provided the
strongest incentive to try to relieve the poor. The later British famine
codes in India used outbreaks of disorder as an early warning signal for
famine. In its description of past famines, the 1880 Indian Famine Com-
mission Report gives many examples of public unrest. In 1836, in the
Western Provinces, for example, “violent agrarian disturbances and
robberies of grain carts and grain stores were so rife that troops had in
several cases to be called out” (Part 1: 11).4 Similar worries appear to have
prevailed and influenced famine policy in early modern England. While
episodes involving crowds usually saw the central government’s call for
their punishment tempered by the local authority’s desire not to further
exacerbate tensions, they invariably led to orders to see the poor relieved.
Despite the fact that explanations of dearth, held by the people and
endorsed by the government, highlighted hoarding, it was the movement
of grain out of the local economy against which collective protests were
directed (Boshstedt, 2010; Clark, 1976; Hipkin, 2008; Walter, 2006: chs.
2–3; Walter, 2015). Individuals who turn up in criminal records prosec-
uted for trying to turn the crowds’ anger against the rich and to lead
attacks on their houses and granaries found few followers. Crowd actions
over food sought to defend local priorities in the marketing of grain.
There was a patterning to the geography of crowd actions over food. In
some regions crowds were noticeably absent, either because their local
ecology did not produce grain surpluses or promote the movement of
grain against which crowd actions were directed, or because the popular
explanation for dearth in some regions, like the English Midlands, focused
on enclosure in agriculture, against which protests were directed, rather
30   John Walter
than the activities of middlemen in the market. Where crowds did appear
this reflected the weaknesses in a developing but as yet immature national
market in grain and the points of tension that the commercialisation of
agriculture and regional specialisation exposed. Crowd actions were
located in regions from or through which grain was moved to feed the
larger cities, in particular Bristol in the West Country, Norwich in East
Anglia and above all London.5 They took place in market towns and ports
whose local markets were being subverted, becoming bulking centres for
larger urban middlemen. By the later seventeenth century, continued
urban expansion and new areas of rapid growth like Birmingham in the
industrialising Midlands saw lines of urban supply, and with them crowd
actions, ripple further out (Beloff, 1963).
Collective protests also took place in areas of rural industrialisation,
above all the cloth industry, through which grain was being moved to the
cities. Predominantly located in grain deficient pastoral areas, the ques-
tion of food security was most acute for the large populations of landless
or land-­poor workers plunged into poverty by harvest failure. Without
reserves and dependent on the market for both employment and food,
they simultaneously faced high prices and mass unemployment, since the
impact of higher food prices on disposable income quickly cut demand
for their products and encouraged the withdrawal of mercantile circulat-
ing capital, leaving the producers in their cottages to bear the economic
brunt of the crisis. To the extent that rural industrial development took
place in areas not favoured by the gentry for the location of their house-
holds and where, therefore, a magistracy recruited from the landed class
was not available to police local markets or to initiate relief measures, this
also helps to explain why it was often the crowd in these regions that first
took action against what they saw as the causes of dearth (Walter, 2006:
43–4, 71–2).
Crowd actions were an expression of the popular anger and fear that
dearth caused. Where crowds assembled, their anger was directed at the
corrupt practices which they (and authority) believed sought to create an
artificial scarcity in order to profit from their suffering. But crowd actions
were rarely a form of self-­help. The amount of grain crowd members could
have seized was limited and one consequence of such actions might have
been to drive away the middlemen on which some harvest-­sensitive areas
relied for their supply. There was a question of scale here. Since rural
industrial workers might also rely on smaller middlemen for the provision
of grain, it was the activities of large city middlemen and, above all, foreign
merchants, which particularly aroused popular anger.
While crowd actions were, therefore, a form of direct action to attempt
to stop an immediate grievance, they were also an attempt to negotiate
with authority. Their rhetoric of violence was an invitation to action on
the part of the authorities rather than a call to arms. Since public pro-
nouncements appeared to endorse the popular reading of the causes of
 Famine in early modern England   31
dearth, the crowds’ anger might be directed against the authorities for
their failure to take the measures their own explanation of the causes of
dearth required. As such, the stereotype of such actions as food riots –
collective theft with violence – does scant justice to the complex and often
subtle actions employed by the protesting crowds. Middlemen were
attacked when it was clear that they were moving grain out of the local
market or economy; ships’ sails were removed and would-­be exporters
“fined”; grain was seized, rather than stolen, and either sold in a form of
taxation populaire at below famine prices or returned to the authorities as a
pointed reminder that they should have prevented the illicit movement of
grain under the policy ordered by the Book of Orders. That these tactics
mimicked actions prescribed by the government’s dearth policy was delib-
erate. Crowds drew on authority’s own publicly proclaimed policies in
order to coerce the authorities and to signal their belief in the legitimacy
of their own actions.
Years of harvest failure in early modern England were, however, not
marked by frequent and widespread rioting. The absence of a standing
army or professional police force with which to repress popular protest
meant that early modern English governments were all too aware that they
needed to anticipate and, if possible, pre-­empt popular protest. Victims of
their own belief in the volatility of the people, government and elite feared
the “dangerous desperacy” (The National Archives, SP 14/138/35) unre-
lieved hunger and popular anger would create. If crowd actions were not
more common in this period it was then because such was governmental
sensitivity to the threat of disorder that actions short of collective violence,
and which avoided the sanctions of the law, might trigger relief measures.
A tradition of popular petitioning allowed the poor, individually or collec-
tively, in person or in writing, to appeal more formally to magistrates for
relief. These petitions, sometimes presented by large and importunate
crowds, hinted at the violence that the lack of relief would bring (Hindle,
2008; Walter, 2001: 123–7, 137–9). Skilfully drafted in the language of the
public transcript that government and elites advanced to legitimise power
in their self-­proclaimed duty to protect the subsistence of their subordi-
nates, these sought to embarrass the authorities into taking action (Walter,
2015, 62–4). Such was the sensitivity that even lurid cases of seditious indi-
viduals reported to the king’s council could trigger orders back into the
regions to see the poor relieved.
It was a commonplace throughout early modern Europe that one of the
monarch’s prime responsibilities was to ensure the subsistence of their
subjects. As Louis XIV noted, “the need for food is the first thing a prince
should consider” (Tilly, 1975: 447). Failure to do so might see criticism of
the monarch memorialised in the naming of episodes of famine after
inept kings (Ó Gráda, 2009: 196). When in the 1690s Scotland experi-
enced one of its worst famines, these were labelled “King Williams’s Ill
years” (Cullen, 2010: 29). Early modern English governments had
32   John Walter
developed a range of policies by which to police the grain market and, in
years of harvest failure, to ensure poorer consumers access to grain (Slack,
1980; 1988: 138–48; Outhwaite, 1991).
Codified by the later sixteenth century in what came to be called “Books
of Orders”, they clearly predated this. Printed to be distributed to provin-
cial and local authorities, these established an elaborate policy to address
the problem of dearth by policing the movement and marketing of grain.
Regular reports on food stocks were to be sent to central government
(Langelüddecke, 1998). Justices of Peace in the counties and boroughs
were to ensure that laws regulating the activities of “badgers” – middlemen
in the grain trade – were enforced in order to prevent hoarding or fore-
stalling markets and regrating (purchasing to later sell at a higher price).
Magistrates were to conduct grain surveys and to assign those with sur-
pluses to bring specified amounts of grain regularly to local markets.
Within price levels set by statute, they were also to prevent the illegal
export of grain in years of harvest failure. There the magistrates were to
be personally present to ensure that poorer consumers were served first,
in quantities small enough for them to purchase, and (more controversial
this) at under-­market prices.
Not surprisingly, some key aspects of these policies had been antici-
pated by city or town governments where the conjectural poor, those ren-
dered vulnerable by the impact of harvest failure on both work and prices,
might swell the already large body of structural poor to represent over half
the urban population. Large urban centres raised funds to establish grana-
ries to carry over stocks from good to bad years, as in the case of London,
and in years of dearth to import foreign grain (Leonard, 1900, chs. 3, 7).
These stocks might serve as equalisation funds to moderate high prices,
but they might also be used to distribute grain at subsidised, under-­market
prices and in smaller urban centres even free as either grain or sometimes
bread to the very poorest. Nevertheless, harvest failure severely tested the
ability of the early modern urban authorities to finance these schemes
(Nielsen, 1997).
The poor law represented a second resource to mitigate the impact of
harvest failure and on which the poor might draw (Hindle, 2004; Slack,
1988, 1990, 1999; Smith, 2011). Again, it is clear that, as with the Book of
Orders policy, parishes had been establishing compulsory collection-­based
provision for the poor from at least the mid-­sixteenth century (and in the
more prosperous south-­east and eastern counties even earlier) (McIntosh,
2014; Smith, 2015). Codified in legislation at the end of the sixteenth
century, the poor law established, at least in theory, a national system of a
rate-­based poor relief and at the local level of the parish a set of officials
responsible for collecting the rate and relieving (and disciplining) those
designated the poor. In normal years the collection of an annual or bi-­
annual rate was used mainly to provide occasional payments to the sick,
orphans and the elderly and more regular payments to a small group of
 Famine in early modern England   33
pensioner poor, in which widows predominated – those groups sub-
sequent research has shown to be most vulnerable to famine. But in dearth
years, in the countryside, as well as in the towns, a developing poor law
worked alongside the policy of the Book of Orders to make provision for
those unable to purchase their food. Poor law collections were used to
fund the purchase and distribution of grain or bread to the much larger
numbers of harvest-­sensitive, left poor by harvest failure and unable to
produce or purchase sufficient food. Local records show parishes in years
of dearth collecting multiple rates in order to be able to fund such relief.
The patchwork geography to the introduction of local poor law admin-
istration meant that, towns aside, it was more fully and earliest developed
in the more prosperous south and east. This suggests that the longer per-
sistence of famine in the highland zone may reflect not just weaknesses in
local ecologies but also the greater poverty of these regions and conse-
quent absence in some, but not even all of these communities, of what
protection the poor law could provide, fatal to that group of insecure sub-­
tenants who have been shown to have been the primary victims of famine
there (Healey, 2011). It is significant that an older policy of providing
relief by permitting local begging by the community’s resident poor per-
sisted here after its suppression elsewhere and that, despite this, dearth
years were marked by out-­migration from these famine-­prone areas in
search of relief. Nevertheless, the valuable evidence of reports from the
provinces to central government under the Book of Orders, as well as sur-
viving local parish records, suggests that incremental improvement meant
that by the mid-­seventeenth century effective poor law administration had
spread much more widely to include previously vulnerable regions
(Healey, 2014). By at least the mid-­seventeenth century, the resilience of
local structures of relief meant that England (but not Scotland or Ireland)
avoided for the most part the forced migrations of populations that else-
where saw a fatal link between the social dislocation that famine produced
and crowd diseases that proved far more deadly than outright starvation.
Government policy – the Books of Orders and the poor law – offered
therefore an important resource to combat the immediate problem of
food security in years of dearth, providing transfer payments between the
propertied and the poor (Kelly and Ó Gráda, 2014: 375–8). But policy
needed to be implemented, and there were tensions between policy and
practice. For example, for early modern governments the priority of
feeding and maintaining order in the capital saw them in years of harvest
failure willing to ignore their own laws and permit the continuing move-
ment of grain from countryside to city to feed London. A shared concern
for the maintenance of order in years of harvest failure therefore saw the
central government’s priority to privilege feeding the larger towns and
cities clash with the concern of provincial magistrates and the rulers of
smaller market towns to protect the local market by banning the activities of
large-­scale urban middlemen in local markets. There were contradictions in
34   John Walter
implementing the government’s dearth policy in a commercialising society
with a significant urban sector and developing, but poorly integrated,
national market that relied upon middlemen to move grain. These contra-
dictions were compounded in areas of arable specialisation by a policy
which required a landed magistracy whose rents and profits rested on the
grain trade to implement regulation and ban exports. They might prove
initially tardy in the recognition of a crisis and the implementation of the
policies laid down under the Book of Orders. In such counties, actions
against the middlemen necessary to carrying on a commercial trade in
grain might be thought undesirable by both producers and magistracy.
The legality of local magistrates setting the price of grain in the market
place was also contested.
Popular agency was therefore often critically important in kick-­starting
the implementation of policies to regulate the markets and relieve the
poor. Given the knowledge that harvest failure brought a sharp increase in
those needing relief – as one anonymous libel reminded the authorities,
“the PORe TheRe is MORe/Then Goes from dore to dore” – it was
popular pressure that served to signal to central authority the onset of the
occurrence of dearth locally and thus to prompt the implementation of
the government’s dearth policies (Walter, 2001, 142). It is significant that
reports from local magistrates in arable counties like Norfolk, where
crowd actions occurred, report the willingness of grain-­producing com-
munities to provide for the poor outside of the market and of middlemen
in grain to set aside a portion of the grain traded in the market to be sold
to the poor at under-­market prices.

Conclusion
While weaknesses in local ecologies, vulnerable surpluses and poor and
unfavourable market integration explain the occurrence of famine, in the
longer run better market integration and improved agricultural yields,
when married with the controls on population growth to be found in Eng-
land’s “low-­pressure” demographic regime, explain its disappearance. But
in the interim the failure of agricultural output to keep pace with renewed
population growth exacerbated problems of food security for the harvest-­
sensitive land-­poor and labour-­dependant social groups, whose numbers
swelled in years of harvest failure. As a telling comparison with the causes
of the more deadly medieval English famines makes clear (Slavin, 2014;
Smith, 2015), it was the redistribution secured by a combination of the
access to food to be found within the social economy of dearth and
transfer payments under the poor law and the government’s dearth policy
that allowed England to escape crises of subsistence.
A recurring theme in the anthropology of famine is the resilience or
otherwise of social structures and community relationships under pressure
from harvest failure. In this respect it is worth emphasising that a
 Famine in early modern England   35
c­ ombination of factors ensured that early modern English society survived
the strains that atomisation of households and fraying of inter-­personal
and inter-­household relationships that famine might elsewhere cause.
Neighbourliness and reciprocity remained important for all because of
England’s particular, nuclear familial structure which made the com-
munity, not kin the immediate resource for those below the elite. The
strategies discussed here were only able to work because harvest failure
produced not absolute scarcity, but social and spatial shortages. The exist-
ence of a surplus, albeit a diminished one, meant that access to food for
the harvest-­sensitive might still be secured within the circuits of exchange
within the social economy. Despite undoubted pressures in years of harvest
failure, redistributive charity and other forms of informal relief never
faced the uncomfortable challenge that absolute scarcity might have
posed. At the same time, the organised transfer of reduced surpluses
under the poor law and the government’s dearth policy could take place
because the structures of provincial and local and communal government
were sufficiently developed and sturdy enough to withstand the disloca-
tions that damaged other governments’ attempts to manage famine. In
the absence of a professional bureaucracy, the English Crown had
developed an effective government down to the local level of the parish of
self-­government at the king’s command by co-­opting the support and
social capital of provincial and local elites. The harvest-­sensitive in early
modern England survived dearth then by being able to marry together the
protection offered by formal relief, charity and the informal practices and
exchanges of the social economy which insulated many from the full
impact of harvest failure within what has been called “the makeshift
economy” by which the poor survived. Where these were challenged, then
popular agency had a role to play in defending a “moral economy”,
prompting elites and government to renew practices and policies, some-
thing made easier for them by the fact that harvest failure was always a
temporary crisis.
By the later seventeenth century, England had escaped famine. But
this was not the case for her immediate neighbours of Scotland and
Ireland, to whom it might be argued England successfully exported
famine as a result of the unfavourable specialisation its growth prompted
there (Crawford, 1989; Drake, 1968; Flinn, 1977). But this did not mean
an end to the food insecurities that dearth caused. The disappearance
of “crises of subsistence”, precisely defined as a demographic measure,
should not be allowed to obscure the fact that for many individuals the
recurrence of harvest failure meant that hunger remained a very real
threat. For England’s poor, the silent violence of hidden hunger per-
sisted. The fact that problems of food security continued to raise ques-
tions of political legitimacy made food a source of continuing contest
between government and people.
36   John Walter
Notes
1 Demographically, mortality crises are defined statistically as a sharp increase
above the underlying death rate. Wrigley and Schofield (1981) define mortality
crises as years with recorded deaths at least 10 per cent above a 25-year moving
average.
2 The impact on nuptiality and fertility, it should be noted, was however stronger.
3 On the application of the doctrine of judgements to dearth, see Walter and
Wrightson, 1976; and for an analysis of the rhetoric of famine sermons and their
blending of Biblical and practical exempla, see discussion of Lavater and Barlow,
1596, in Mukherjee, A., 2015: 21–30.
4 During the Madras Presidency famine of 1854, the Commission further reported
that “crowds of applicants [for famine employment and relief] flocked in from
the Nizam’s dominions” for nine months (Part 1: 11). Similarly, in 1868–69,
relief houses in British cantonments in Rajputana struggled to accommodate the
numbers of applicants “so great that it was found impossible to exercise proper
supervision” (Part 1: 14). Such anxieties about disorder led to the 1880s’
codifying of official approaches to addressing famine. Some of the complexities
of administering, in India, officially approved forms of relief, based on models
developed in early modern England and Victorian Britain, are discussed by
Sharma in Chapter 7 of this book.
5 Early modern popular theatre engaged directly with specific instances of
regional crowd action. See Fitter (2000) on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet,
dearth and the London riots of the 1590s; and Hindle (2008) on Coriolanus and
the Midlands Rising of 1607.
2 Subsistence crises and economic
history
A study of eighteenth-­century
Bengal
Rajat Datta

Subsistence crises – dearth and famines – are often seen as exceptional

occurrences, as severe dislocations in the “normal” run of things, or as
aberrations. Their economic consequences are considered economic
“excess” points – excess starvation, excess mortality and excess misery,
without clarity about what constitutes the “normal”. This distinction, not
easily established even for modern eras, becomes more confounding when
analysing such crises in the past. Amartya Sen’s influential point of view
stresses “entitlement” failures to explain these regressive departures from
the normal; while Alamgir sees the prelude to starvation as an outcome of
a tangible food availability decline, which is materially a more verifiable
feature than an entitlement failure (Sen, 1981; Alamgir, 1980).1 The lat-
ter’s lack of empirical clarity becomes more accentuated in past (i.e. pre-­
colonial) contexts where social categories and their economic constituents
are not adequately documented. Ó Grada has suggested, following Sen,
that recent (modern?) famines differ from historic famines in the
enhanced role of distributional shifts or entitlement losses, rather than
output declines per se, in producing famine (Ó Grada, 2007: 10). This
chapter will suggest that, on the contrary, evidence from the eighteenth
century indicates both distributional shifts and entitlement losses wrought
by the inability of consumers to buy their sustenance in a shortage-­driven
food-­market.
Further, by highlighting the economic content of entitlement failures in
more contemporary contexts, the entitlements approach allows an implicit
assumption that subsistence crises in pre-­colonial periods (broadly speak-
ing) were failures engendered by the collapse of cultural norms of reci-
procity, or other loosely non-­market phenomena. While some of these
features may have prevailed in past societies, this would be an unsustaina-
ble proposition during the early modern period (from the fourteenth to
the nineteenth centuries) when economic and market networks had
assumed remarkable densities across regions (Datta, 2014). In other
words, the entitlement approach, while it indicates that famine or dearth
induce economic malfunctions, does not suggest ways of studying, first,
the exact economic content of such malfunctions, and second, the key
38   Rajat Datta
e­ lements which combined to trigger such abnormalities, and their
sequences. The argument that this economic content can be worked out
by examining colonial interventions, through devices such as regressive
taxation or distorted commercialization, also provides a partial picture
(Raj et al., 1985; Damodaran, 2007).
It would be methodologically limiting to treat subsistence crises as the epi-
phenomena of mainstream economic history. Do subsistence crises have an
economic history (like for instance the economic history of commodities or
money)? Can they open explanatory vistas for the economic historian? I
would argue that a serious scarcity (even if does not translate itself into a full-­
blown famine) unravels the economic structure in some fundamental ways.
These episodes constitute entry points into the inner operations of the
economy primarily because of what they reveal about the economic funda-
mentals of the society in the grip of such a crisis. They unpack factors relating
to agricultural shocks and their economic context (the frequency and impact
of crop failures, for instance) on the one hand, and those relating to human
agency (the functioning of markets, war and social upheaval, public action,
governance) on the other (Ó Grada, 2007: 6).
This information base then tells us about the economic structures of
subsistence: production (because it has for some reason failed), circula-
tion (because food hasn’t reached the circulatory stage) and consumption
(because not much is available). The three when combined reveal the
interstices of the economy from the consumption side, particularly in pre-­
colonial systems where consumption data are meagre. In other words,
subsistence crises provide information on the economic history of subsistence (as
distinct from a subsistence economy), which has the following variables:
market networks, money and exchange mechanisms (together constitut-
ing the commercial dimension) and price oscillations (determining pur-
chasing power in real terms). While the largest numbers of famine victims
usually came from the weakest sections of the population, the general
impact of famine depended on the internal conditions of a place or region
and on the specific causal sequences leading to the famine. This chapter
will attempt to construct this economic history from the data on subsist-
ence crises in eighteenth-­century Bengal. Though the geographical and
temporal boundaries are very specific, it is hoped that some of the infer-
ences from the data may have larger resonances, particularly in the under-
standing the economics of pre-­modern or early modern subsistence and
consumption.

The context
Historically, famine and dearth were two distinct, though interrelated
crises of survival. Famine was typically a situation when a subsistence and
mortality crisis became combined in a critical conjuncture lasting for a
length of time, which stretched beyond the critical threshold of a food
 Subsistence crises and economic history   39
shock. This reveals how famines exacted large death tolls, despite some-
times being regionally uneven in their spread; had weather as their proxi-
mate cause; and resulted in considerable loss of output, as reflected in
sharp increases in food prices (Ó Grada, 2005: 146). These variables influ-
enced the extent of both excessive starvation and excessive mortality in a
famine. Dearth, on the other hand, constituted a more continuous saga of
smaller scarcities. Although periods of dearth had lesser impact than
famines, they were nevertheless important since their periodicity created
major problems of subsistence among the harvest-­sensitive strata (the arti-
sans, labourers and the town poor), women and children in the house-
hold, as well as among a section of the peasantry, especially those who
worked for wages or cultivated lands with inadequate resources (Datta,
1996). It has been suggested that although crises of subsistence have been
identified through the combination of high mortality at a time of high
prices, prices need not reflect availability if most of the population was not
dependent on the market for food, or if there was a decline in purchasing
power, or, more generally, exchange entitlement, in Sen’s terms (cf. Cotts
Watkins and Menken, 1985). This chapter suggests prices did reflect avail-
ability, and people starved, or died, because they couldn’t afford to buy
food at prevailing prices.
In other words, crises of subsistence, both dearth and famines, were
severe dislocations in the “normal” run of things. Social perceptions classi-
fied various food-­crises according to their scale and magnitude. Paul Gree-
nough correctly states that there are cultural perceptions of prosperity,
and conversely of adversity. In traditional Bengali society, such percep-
tions depended on the nature of the current paddy harvest and the ways
in which different social groups were allowed access to it (Greenough,
1982: 42–52).2 Yet, as I have argued elsewhere, dearth and famines were
more than rude shocks to established cultural constructs of plenitude
(“society’s conception of the good life” (Greenough, 1982: 12)) and scar-
city. They caused severe economic dislocations. Production faltered, prices
soared and people died. Traditional means of support within the com-
munity no longer sufficed to maintain social bonds, or to alleviate the suf-
ferings of the famine stricken (Datta, 2000: ch. 3). Table 2.1 shows the
number of times the province was affected during the eighteenth century.
In order to contextualize the dynamics of subsistence and surplus con-
sumption in eighteenth-­century Bengal, as well as the economic implica-
tions of subsistence crises, one has to keep two specific aspects in mind:
the first was its highly fluvial environment; the second, its great wet-­rice
producing economy. In 1656, the French traveller Francois Bernier, while
describing the “beauty of Bengale”, remarked that:

throughout a country extending nearly a hundred leagues in length,

on both banks of the Ganges, from Raje-­Mehale [Rajmahal] to the
sea, is an endless number of channels, cut, in bygone ages, from that
40   Rajat Datta
Table 2.1 Subsistence crises in eighteenth-century Bengal

Year Type of calamity Location Symptoms

1711 Drought West Bengal Scarcity and deaths

1718 Drought All-Bengal Scarcity
1727 Drought Unspecified Price increase
1728 Drought Unspecified Scarcity
1732 Unspecified Unspecified Dearth
1734 Drought All-Bengal Scarcity
1737 Flood West Bengal Scarcity
1741 Flood West Bengal Mulberry crop was ruined
1742 Flood Unspecified Scarcity
1752–53 Flood All-Bengal Scarcity and death
1755 Flood West Bengal High price and scarcity
1761 Unspecified West Bengal High prices
1763 Flood East Bengal Scarcity and deaths
1767 Flood East Bengal Partial loss to crops
1767 Drought West Bengal Scarcity
1769–70 Drought Regional Famine, dearth, high mortality
1773/74 Drought/Flood Regional Dearth, high prices
1775 Drought West Bengal Partial scarcity high prices
1777 Drought West Bengal Harvest failure, dearth, high
prices
1779 Drought West Bengal Crops destroyed, high prices and
a famine panic
1783 Drought/Flood Regional Crop failure and “public scarcity”
1787–88 Flood South and East High mortality in the east
Bengal
1791 Drought West Bengal Food shortage, high prices
1793 Drought West Bengal Similar symptoms as above

Source: Datta, 2000: 240, 243.

river with immense labour, for the conveyance of merchandise and of

the water itself, which is reputed by the Indians to be superior to any
in the world. These channels are lined on both sides with towns and
villages, thickly peopled with Gentiles; and with extensive fields of
rice, sugar, corn, sesame for oil, and small mulberry-­trees, two or three
feet in height, for the food of silk-­worms.
(1972: 442; cf. Mukherjee, T., 2013)

Bernier’s statement suggests a significant connection between fluvial-­

maritime channels of communication and the density of economic activity
in seventeenth-­century Bengal. The best confirmation of this comes in the
mapping of Bengal rivers undertaken by James Rennell and published in the
1793 edition of his Memoirs of a Map of Hindoostan. According to Rennell,

The Ganges and the Burrampooter, together with their numerous

branches and adjuncts intersect the country of Bengal […] in such a
 Subsistence crises and economic history   41
variety of directions, as to form the most complete and easy inland
navigation that can be conceived. So equally and admirably diffused
are these natural canals, over a country that approaches nearly to a
perfect plane, excepting the lands contiguous to Burdwan, Birbhoom,
etc. We may safely pronounce that every part of the country has, even
in the dry season, some navigable stream within 25 miles at the far-
thest, and more commonly, within a third part of that distance. Nor
will it be wondered at, when it is known, that all the salt and a large
portion of the food consumed by ten million people are conveyed by
water within the kingdom of Bengal and its dependencies. To these
must be added the transport of the commercial exports and imports,
probably to the amount of two million sterling per annum; the inter-
change of manufactures and products, throughout the whole country;
the fisheries, and the articles of travelling.
(1793: 335)

One must however keep in mind that rivers changed courses, which could
sometimes lead to moribundity in one place and a renewed fluviality in
another (cf. Bhattacharya, Chapter 5 of this book). The Ganges shifted
often. Its older arms like the Bhairab dried out, but it grew newer limbs in
the form of Bhagirathi which was crucial in the ensuing prosperity of
central and western Bengal. The Brahmaputra shifted eastwards and
enabled the huge recharging of the Ganga-­Padma estuary on which so
much of Bengal’s early modern maritime economy came to depend in the
eighteenth century (Mukherjee, 1938: 7–8).
Despite these uncertainties, other observers largely corroborated Bernier
and Rennell in underscoring the centrality of fluvial interconnections in
Bengal’s maritime vibrancy. In the entire belt stretching from Dhaka to
Hughli which was subject to “seasonal inundations”, the continuity of eco-
nomic life was maintained by a seamless transfer from land to boats during
the monsoon. For James Taylor, writing in 1840, the “abundance of the nec-
essaries of life” in eastern Bengal was significantly due to the ease with which
these could be transported to the markets on boats (294). In 1893, Thomas
Twining noted how the innumerable rivers and natural canals that inter-
sected the province “afforded a most extensive and convenient communica-
tion through the interior in every direction”. From the “Jamuna to the
Burrampooter” down to the Bay of Bengal, rivers comprised a grid by which
“the productions of Europe, of China, and of the numerous islands in the
Straits of Malacca” passed on to the “northern parts of Hindostan destined
for every part of the world” (469). Walter Hamilton estimated that Bengal’s
rivers employed more than 300,000 boatmen on a continuous basis, c.1828
(186). The numbers would be substantially higher if we factor in those rivers
which were only seasonally navigable.
Turning to the second aspect, the province’s wet-­rice producing
economy,3 we see that under normal circumstances, Bengal produced
42   Rajat Datta
three rice harvests, aman, boro and aus. Aman was the winter harvest which
was universally sown in the Bengali month of Assar (June–July) and har-
vested in Agrahan (November–December). This harvest was generally con-
sidered of great market value “bearing a higher price and sought after by
all”. The other major crop was that of aus (spring), sown in Baisakh (April–
May) and reaped in Bhadro (August–September). Compared to the winter
crop, the spring harvest was intrinsically inferior, being consumed over-
whelmingly by the “lowest and poorest classes”. Boro rice was an inter-
mediate crop producing the coarsest quality rice, which was sown in
Chaitra (March–April) on extremely low lands4 and reaped in either Assar
(June–July) or Srawan (July–August). Therefore, unlike the two major
crops which required a gestation period of six months, the boro was a
quick-­ripening crop, capable of providing a harvest in four months
(WBSA, BRP (G) 1: 17 October 1794).
In western Bengal, boro rice land was “the lowest admitting of cultiva-
tion”, which “requires no manure, produces a constant succession of rice
ad infinitum, without any discernible decrease of vegetative power, requir-
ing only [to be] annually sown with successive varieties of grain” (OIOC,
Ms. Eur. F. 95, f. 30; emphasis original). In the largely flat alluvial plains of
southern and south-­eastern Bengal, the same land was used to procure
multiple crops of rice in succession. Thus, in Midnapur, jala land of the
“1st kind … produces two crops of rice at the same time, the first called
ause … and the other aumeen” (IOR, BRC, P/51/15, 28 January 1787). In
eastern Bengal:

The aumun crop being cut in Aughun [November–December], the

Reapers scatter Khassarie [vetch] amongst the stubble, while the soil is
yet moist and soft from the inundation, which springs up without any
trouble, and is gathered in Phagun [February–March]. The stubble
and stalk of the khassarie are then set on fire and the ashes ploughed
in with the soil. The boro dhan [paddy] mixed with aumun is then
sown; this [boro] being of very quick growth is ripe in Jeyte or Assar
[May to July]; it is then cut and the aumun which is of slower growth
rises with the water [i.e.the seasonal inundation] and is cut in Aughun
[November–December].
(IOR, BRC, P/51/40, 15 July 1789)

Turning to the question of consumption, there is enough evidence now to

refute notions of self-­sufficiency even at the level of basic food grains. Con-
sumption requirements were substantial, varied and ascended through a
range of social and geographical spaces stretching from nucleated house-
holds in villages to the large and intermediate towns. Town demand had a
clear effect on local trade in agricultural produce (Datta, 2015; cf.
Mukherjee, T., 2013: ch. 2). Contemporary observers noted the increase
in Calcutta’s population throughout the century (Marshall, 1977: 24).
 Subsistence crises and economic history   43
Dhaka had about 450,000 people living within its environs in 1765 (IOR,
Home Miscellaneous 465, p. 146) and continued to be thickly peopled
later on (Datta, 1986: 287). In 1757, Murshidabad was declared “one of
the richest cities in the world” (OIOC, Francis Mss. Eur. E. 12, f. 250), and
in 1764, Robert Clive described this city as “extensive, populous and rich
as the city of London, with this difference that there are individuals in the
first possessing infinitely greater property than in the last [named] city”
(1764: 19).
The extent of urban consumption can be deduced from data on impor-
tations of rice into the city of Calcutta. In 1752, the annual importation of
rice in the main markets of the city was 400,000 maunds (Holwell, 1764:
246), which, at 0.66 rupees per maund in 1752 (Long, 1868: no. 99 (1752),
p. 47), gives a monetized value of traded rice at 264,000 rupees. In order
to encourage the import of food into the city, the duties on rice and paddy
were reduced to 4 per cent in 1759 (OIOC, Letters Received, E/4/24,
letter of 29 December 1759). In 1773, duties collected on rice imports
were 16,874 rupees, which, at the rate of 4 per cent duty, gives us a traded
value of 416,850 rupees for that year (OIOC, BRC, P/49/48, 30 November
1774). In 1783, the city imported 2,031,534 maunds of rice (WBSA, BCP, 6
August–29 December 1783; 7 November 1783), which, at the prevailing
price of 0.89 rupees per maund (Asiatick Researches, XII (1816): 560–1),
gives us a monetized value of 1,808,065 rupees. In first four months of
1788, the city imported 312,532 maunds of rice (OIOC, BRC, P/51/19, 21
April 1788), which, at the prevailing rate of 1.5 rupees per maund, gives a
monetary equivalent of 468,798 rupees (a hypothetical value of 1,875,192
rupees for the entire year).5
Calcutta’s demand structure was extensive but not exceptional, com-
pared to other places in the province. The demand for food generated by
these towns exerted a crucial influence on the direction and movement of
local trade. While the average monthly consumption of common quality
rice in Calcutta was 250,000 maunds in the 1780s (OIOC, BRC, P/51/17, 4
March 1788), Murshidabad needed more than 130,000 maunds of rice and
57,000 maunds of paddy for its sustenance in the 1790s (ibid.: P/52/50, 19
October 1792). Towns lower down the scale needed proportionate
amounts of food. Unfortunately, these needs cannot be worked out
because of the scarcity of relevant information. Quantitative data of the
amounts of money involved in the purchase of food and other items of
consumption are equally scarce. However, the available evidence indicates
that the amount of foodgrains available to merchants from different locali-
ties for the purpose of catering to town demand, and for exports outside
the province (referred to as the “exportable surplus” in our sources)
seldom fell below 20 per cent of the gross agricultural output under
normal circumstances (Datta, 1986: 148).
It was rural demand for basic food items that militates most strongly
against notions of rural self-­sufficiency. It has been suggested that, based
44   Rajat Datta
on the data provided by the decennial population censuses 1871 onwards,
for 35–50 per cent of the rural population, consisting of very poor
peasants, agricultural and non-­agricultural labourers, artisans and service
workers, access to food was related to “employment entitlements” (Ghose,
1982: 377). Interestingly, our evidence reveals a similarly high concentra-
tion of households with non-­agricultural occupations in rural society in
the eighteenth century, too. Pure artisans, that is, those who were com-
pletely separated from any form of agricultural production, accounted for
27 per cent of the households; petty administrative officials, literate and
religious gentry comprised a sizeable 12.89 per cent. This suggests that an
overwhelming number of households in rural society, at least 50 per cent,
were directly involved in market-­based transactions. The dependence of
such people, particularly at least a quarter of them (the artisans), on the
market for their basic sustenance was almost absolute (Datta, 2015:
357–8). It would take a subsistence crisis to bring this aspect out in the
open with devastating consequences.
Further, there was a major change in the economic environment of
consumption in early modern Bengal, brought about by phenomenal
expansions of money use in rural areas and of Bengal’s overseas exports
in this period. A robust rural market for externally procured goods
existed and can be seen from the voluminous records of non-­agricultural
(sair jiha’at) taxes kept by the state. Shroffs (bankers) percolated into
villages, cowri shops exchanging the shell (imported largely from
Maldives) began to be set up in the villages, and cowri–silver rupee
exchange rates became matters of village-­level importance (Datta, 2014:
95–6). Consumption was structurally linked to the market and house-
hold reproduction was inescapably linked to its vicissitudes. Notions of
an idyllic and autarkic village environment are at odds with the brutal
facts of households eating their seed reserves during dearth, barely able
to support themselves, and reaching a point where “Musslemens [sic]
and lower casts [sic] of Hindoos are glad to get persons to take [away]
their children” (OIOC, BRC P/51/19, 17 April 1788).
Society was stratified, so were households, and consumption was thus
naturally differentiated according to the position and rank of the house-
hold. This point was explicitly made by Francis Buchanan during his
surveys of the district of Rangpur c.1807, where he divided households
into seven ranks on the basis of their consumption profiles. His findings
tell us that the higher the rank of the household, the higher was the per
capita consumption of non-­food, including the so-­called luxury items. The
lower the rank of a household, the higher would be the subsistence costs
of household reproduction. Eighty per cent of household incomes of this
latter rank was spent on purchasing food, compared to less than 20 per
cent among the first two ranks (Buchanan, “Ronggoppur”, OIOC, Ms.
Eur. G.11, Table 39; Bhattacharya, 1982: 279–80).
 Subsistence crises and economic history   45
Price movements and their implications
Scarcities began when harvests fell short. In other words, there was a
decline in the gross availability of food grains which, depending on the
extent of the damaged harvest, would constitute the critical difference
between some starvation, serious starvation and famine starvation. Table
2.2 is indicative of these various stages.
At the broadest level, there were three economic symptoms of a subsist-
ence crisis. These were: (1) severe food-­availability decline at local levels;
(2) enhancements in the spot-­prices of rice and paddy; and (3) the
inability of the people, especially the poor, to purchase their subsistence.
The question, however, and one where the economic content of these
crises becomes manifest, is how did such shortfalls convert themselves into
crises of subsistence? The answer lies in the behaviour of agricultural
prices, particularly the prices of paddy and rice, in the markets, both in
towns as well as in the countryside. The degree, temporal duration and
geographical spread of these rising prices were germane. The most distinc-
tive feature of a price rise caused by a harvest contraction, and a sudden
fall in market supplies, was its sharp and abnormal spike. Therefore, the
steepness of the price line, and its deviation from what was considered
“normal” determined the extent of the damage which would come about.
In a study of famines in Bengal, W. W. Hunter pointed to the critically
small dividing line between the “famine warning” and a “famine point” in
the province, the central determinant of which was the price situation. For
Hunter, the dividing line between the two could collapse “with the slight-
est rise in prices of agricultural produce” (1869: 16–17).
The important bearing that such sharp rise in prices had can be seen
from the following complaints made by cultivators. Faced with a drought
in 1774, the peasants of Burdwan complained:

Our condition is most miserable; for though there is grain in the

hands of the Merchants, … they have leagued together to keep the
price up and we are perishing with hunger. If we cannot procure food
even with money, how is possible for us to stay in the District?
(OIOC, BRC, 30 August 1774; emphasis added)

Table 2.2 Harvest damage in dearth and famine

Year Occurrence Portion of crop destroyed (%) Outcome

1769–70 Drought 50 to 28 Famine

1775 Drought 33.3 to 37.5 Dearth
1779 Drought 25 Dearth
1786–87 Flood 37.5 to 50 Famine
1791 Drought 33 Dearth

Source: Datta, 2000: 250.

 46   Rajat Datta
Similarly, in 1791, it was found,

The buzaars have hitherto been sufficiently well supplied to answer

the immediate wants of the inhabitants; but the alarm of an approach-
ing scarcity is now become so universal that the poorer sort of people will
shortly experience considerable distress, as the price of grain and the
difficulty of procuring it, even for money, is daily increasing.
(Ibid.: P/52/27, 23 November 1791; emphasis added)

Figures 2.1 and 2.2 show the trends in the prices of four agricultural prod-
ucts during the severe famine of 1769–70 and the near-­famine situation
in 1788.
Figure 2.3 shows the movement of monthly prices of ordinary rice
between October 1769 and September 1770 in Midnapur, a district which
had been severely hit by the famine.
My final data sets are given in Table 2.3, which contains prices of
ordinary rice (in rupees per maund) of the winter harvest in four areas of
the province which had been severely hit by the floods and had, in the
aftermath, experienced a near-­famine situation.
Though the degree of excess mortality in 1788 was much lower than the
famine of 1769–70, there were some reports of deaths caused by unavailability
of food from eastern Bengal, whereas western Bengal remained relatively
unaffected. Both Figure 2.2 and Table 2.3 show that despite the degree of
the scarcity-­induced spike in prices being less in 1788 than in 1769, the
sharpness in the rise was nevertheless significant. For instance, compared

1200 300
Prices (mustard oil and clarified butter)
1000 250
Prices (rice and lentils)

800 200

600 150

400 100

200 50

0 0
1768 1769 1770 1771 1772
Year
Rice Lentils Mustard oil Clarified butter

Figure 2.1 Agricultural prices, 1768–72 (1768 = 100).

Source: OIOC, Bengal General Ledgers and Journal, P/175/83 to P/176/29; and Asiatick
Researches, vol. XII, 1816, pp. 560–1.
 Subsistence crises and economic history   47
 

3ULFHV PXVWDUGRLODQGFODULILHGEXWWHU

 
3ULFHV ULFHDQGOHQWLOV







 

 
    
<HDU
5LFH /HQWLOV 0XVWDUGRLO &ODULILHGEXWWHU

Figure 2.2 Agricultural prices, 1785–89 (rupees per maund).

Source: OIOC, Bengal General Ledgers and Journal, P/175/83 to P/176/29; and Asiatick
Researches, vol. XII, 1816, pp. 560–1.

3.5

3
Rupees per maund

2.5

1.5

1
January
1770

February

March

April

May

June

July

August
October
1769

November

December

September

Figure 2.3 Monthly rice prices in Midnapur, October 1769 to September 1770

(rupees per maund).
Source: Price, 1876: 83.
48   Rajat Datta
Table 2.3 Prices of rice (winter harvest), in rupees per maund

Year Calcutta Chittagong Dinajpur Mymensing

1786 1.12 0.88 1.11 0.42

1787 1.12 0.57 1.09 0.40
1788 2.00 0.82 1.39 1.10
1789 1.69 0.78 1.38 0.92

Source: OIOC, BRC, P/51/12, 16, 17.34.

to 1787 the price of ordinary rice in Calcutta went up by nearly 179 per
cent in 1788, whereas in the three other districts, prices increased between
143 and 275 per cent. Though this was undoubtedly much lower than the
almost 900 per cent escalation in the price of common rice between 1769
and 1770, the increase was still enormous, and caused great distress. On
the other hand, the sheer abnormality of the price rise in 1770, and its
persistence for over six months, explains the corresponding enormity of
the deaths which were reported, particularly from western Bengal in that
one year (cf. Datta, 2000: chs. 5, 6).
One of the most harvest- and price-­sensitive social groups in rural
Bengal was the textile producer. Famine and dearth impacted upon them
by hitting directly at their access to markets for their consumption require-
ments. The evidence from Malda and Purnea suggests that between half
and one-­third of those who died in the famine were spinners and weavers.
The disruption caused by the drought to mulberry and cotton in 1769 and
1770 meant that those who reared silk-­worms (chassars) and those who
grew cotton (kappas) in these places were immediately affected. The
cultivation of mulberry was an expensive enterprise: “under the most
favourable circumstance mulberry will cost the Husbandman five or six,
and often from ten to fifteen rupees per bigha”, whereas the cultivation
cost of rice was “not above one, two or at best three rupees a bigha”
(WBSA, CCRM, vol. 6, 19 November 1771). This meant that once peasants
entered this sector their survival depended on conducive precipitation
and favourable food prices.
The situation in 1769–70 was precisely the opposite on both counts,
and therefore proved disastrous for such producers. There was an “incred-
ible mortality” among the chassars of Rajshahi during the famine (ibid.:
vol. 6, 11 November 1771). This was for two reasons. First, the high costs
involved in the culture of silk-­cocoons meant that the chassars had no
reserves to buy food at famine-­point prices. Second, the chassars belonged
to “only two casts [sic] of the Gentoos [Hindus]” who followed this voca-
tion as a specialized occupation (ibid.). For these reasons, they were
perhaps the most harvest-­sensitive of all the affected social strata and, not
having enough food reserves to fall back upon, they died in large
numbers. Significantly, there appears to have been some mortality among
 Subsistence crises and economic history   49
the chassars even in Dhaka which was otherwise largely unaffected by the
severity of the famine (WBSA, CCC 1: 15 October 1771; OIOC, BRC,
P/49/52, from Richard Barwell to Council, 7 April 1775). Finally, there
were the weavers, and it was reported that they also died in “large
numbers” (Sinha, 1956: 1: 160–1), but these deaths were especially con-
centrated in areas like Purnea, Rajshahi, Malda and Murshidabad. The
reports of such deaths suggest a higher concentration of excess mortality
among the chassars followed by deaths among the “winders and weavers”
who “suffered in proportion” to the chassars but not to the same extent
(WBSA, CCC 1: 19 April 1771). This is corroborated by the following
account from the famine of 1769–70.

[It] appears most probable that the mortality was mostly among the
workmen, manufacturers, and people employed in the rivers, who were
without the same means of laying by stores of grain as the husbandmen,
so that the number of consumers who suffered by this calamity was
greater, in proportion, than that of the cultivators of grain.
(Geddes, 1874: 421)

Conclusion
The intention of this chapter was to show how subsistence crises reveal the
economic history of subsistence from the point of consumption. In other
words, its two central arguments, namely, the market-­oriented structure of
consumption, and starvation-­misery outcome of market forces, were tied
to the movement of agricultural prices, and their deleterious impact on
subsistence in an already shortage hit economy. I briefly return to these
formulations in this concluding section.
As mentioned earlier, there existed a non-­agricultural (sair jiha’at) tax
collected by the state. My recent study of these sair taxes showed that the
demand for goods in Bengal’s countryside was of a differentiated nature.
Most villages imported food grains. These imports could be as high as 68
per cent of the value of local trade conducted in the districts. Sugar, salt
and tobacco constituted the other three main elements of primary con-
sumption, followed closely by the consumption of betelnut and leaf (Datta,
2014). Francis Buchanan’s survey of the district of Rangpur (c.1807) also
showed that, in an aggregated sense, rice, various sorts of pulses, mustard
oil, vegetables, chillies, spices, tobacco, molasses or sugar, salt, turmeric,
betel nut and betel leaf were common items of food for all ranks. Clarified
butter was usually an upper social rank indulgence, but since cows and
other cattle were also maintained by the other social groups, it can be
assumed that they had access to some milk products, though most of these
were for sale (Buchanan, “Ronggoppur”, OIOC, Ms. Eur. G.11). More
importantly, the price of goods in the market (nirkh bazar) determined
how much of what commodity a peasant household could consume
50   Rajat Datta
beyond the stocks of rice or paddy available in their personal storehouses
(golahs). The latter facility was not something which rural artisans pos-
sessed, which meant anything between a quarter and a half of the rural
population did not keep food reserves beyond their daily requirements
and were thus critically vulnerable to even the minutest dislocation in the
food market.
Buchanan’s survey of Rangpur also shows that per capita consumption
in rural society was fundamentally linked to incomes and resources, and
expenditures on food-­related items varied inversely proportional to
incomes. In other words, the lower the rank in terms of household
income, the higher the subsistence costs. This was expected in a situation
where the annual income differential between the first and the seventh
ranks was an insurmountable 4070 rupees a year (Buchanan, “Ronggop-
pur”, vol. 1, book 2, OIOC, MS. Eur. D.74, f.24). It is inconceivable that
such disparities did not exist in other places, and this perhaps explains
why, in April 1770, “the ryots [cultivators] in many villages, for want of
rain” were “reduced to the necessity of selling their grain for seed and
their cattle and utensils in order to support themselves”; and, as Camp-
bell’s records further observed,

half of those who pay their revenues and cultivate the land will
undoubtedly perish with hunger, whilst those remaining will be obliged
to purchase their subsistence at least 500 percent dearer than usual [and]
will be drained of that little stock which is the only resource for future
revenue and cultivation.
(1868: 20 April 1770, p. 115)

Therefore, subsistence crises provide information on the economic history

of subsistence in three ways. First, they unravel the inner workings of com-
mercial exchanges comprising the market and demand for increasingly
scarce goods. Second, they reveal to us the exact way in which purchasing
power in real terms becomes determined by price movements.6 Third,
they help us understand how starvation-­induced debilitation or deaths
were market-­related. In other words, what they tell us is that these episodes
were commercial phenomena, which had less to do with a temporary mal-
function in traditionally sanctioned rights (entitlements) of subsistence.
Cultural norms were important in determining social boundaries; but pro-
curing food during such crises was also an economic matter fraught with
grave consequences.

Notes
1 In Amartya Sen’s view, entitlement signifies economic and legal rights: to food,
access to food, or exchange of endowments for food. These can be identifiably
economic (like money or property), socially sanctioned, or state-­directed
 Subsistence crises and economic history   51
interventions to ensure people’s access to food. In this perspective, the market
factor in subsistence crises may operate against certain groups by pulling away
food to service the subsistence demands of groups with greater endowment
powers: for instance, food being sucked out of the countryside to feed the towns
because of higher prices in these places. Mohiuddin Alamgir argues that a
famine is caused basically by a food availability decline, and is
a general state of prolonged food grain intake deficiency per capita giving
rise to a number of a company sub-­states (symptoms) involving individuals
and the community that ultimately lead, directly or indirectly, to excess
deaths in the region or country as a whole.
2 Perhaps such constructs were not unique to traditional Bengali society alone.
Did traditional European societies differ substantially in their conceptions of
dearth and plenty? It would be difficult to argue that they did. Compare, for
instance, Hoskins, 1968; Meuvret, 1988; Walter and Schofield, 1989; Mukherjee,
A., 2015.
3 This section is based on Datta, 2000: ch. 1.
4 In the district of Rajshahi, it was cultivated “chiefly in beds of lakes and in the
nullahs (small water courses)” (WBSA, CCRM, vol. 5, 30 April 1771).
5 In 1788 there was a severe food shortage caused by floods in eastern Bengal, and
that perhaps explains the reduced imports of rice by the city.
6 It has also been suggested that in pre-­industrial Europe, a seasonal price rise
faster than usual could cause desperation among consumers, causing a further
demand-­induced pressure on the already rising prices (Ó Gráda, 2005: 162).
3 Climate signals, environment
and livelihoods in the long
seventeenth century in India
Vinita Damodaran, James Hamilton
and Rob Allan

Climate history is an area of growing interest among environmental histor-

ians.1 As John McNeill recently noted, historians working from textual
sources – primarily in Europe and China where the records are good –
have been moving into the terrain of scientists “who collect and analyze
‘proxy’ data on past climates; tree-­ring series, fossilized pollen or ancient
air bubbles trapped in ice” (2003). The historian Geoffrey Parker –
amongst others – has drawn connections between historical climate
change and periods of extreme weather which, he argues, were respons-
ible not only for localised failure of harvest, price increases and human
casualties, but also violence and rebellion on a global scale, stretching
across Europe to India and China. Parker hypothesises that the wide-
spread agrarian crisis of the seventeenth century, experienced in Europe
and elsewhere, was related to spells of cold weather in the northern hemi-
sphere caused by a variety of factors including atmospheric dust veils from
multiple volcanic eruptions, the repercussions of which were felt on a con-
tinental scale across Europe, the Americas and Asia. Such history – which
links climate to social upheavals – has many detractors, who criticise the
implications of environmental determinism and denial of human and
institutional agency. It is rightly argued that famine causation is complex
and its effects are often linked to social and institutional factors rather
than climate. This was particularly true of the 1770 famine, which can be
attributed primarily to the extreme tax exactions of the East India
Company (EIC), or, as Datta argues in Chapter 2, to market operations,
and far less to the failure of the monsoon. Despite this, climate is increas-
ingly entering into the equation as natural scientists and climate historians
have begun to bridge the disciplinary gulf and to work in concord on both
instrumental and textual data. There has been particular interest in the
history of the El Niño, or more properly ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscilla-
tion), phenomenon, which, it has recently been established, affects
patterns of drought and flood not only around the shores of the Pacific,
but also in north-­east Brazil, South Asia and much of Africa. Lately, histor-
ians have sought to link these phenomena to sustained famines around
the world. The historian Richard Grove, for example, has persuasively
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   53
argued that agrarian unrest associated with the French Revolution – which
occurred during one of the greatest El Niños in modern times, 1789–93
(Grove, 1998) – was in part caused by the phenomena.2 This chapter
explores some of these debates on both a global and regional scale, with
an evidential focus on the Indian subcontinent. In the process, it seeks to
address the notion of the seventeenth-­century crisis on the subcontinent,
considering historiographic and scientific evidence as well as writings on
famine and famine causality on eighteenth-­century India, in the context of
wider discussions in global environmental and climate history.

Historiography of the crisis

The seventeenth century crisis, and its climatic basis, has had significant
impact on recent historiography. Using new research in climate history,
historians such as Geoffrey Parker, Richard Grove, David Clingingsmith
and Jeffrey Williamson have sought to assess the impact of climatic events
on historical upheaval in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Geoffrey Parker, in his magnum opus Global Crisis, War, Climate Change
and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013), and Sam White in Climate
of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (2011), present robust evid-
ence that global cooling occurred in the seventeenth century, and that it
had a dramatic effect on the events of the period. While the idea of a
global crisis is highly contested, for these historians, at least, it is estab-
lished, as is the fact that climate was at its heart. A central premise of these
histories is that the synchronicity of many political disorders in mid-­
seventeenth-century Eurasia was no accident, but was a direct repercussion
of climatic anomalies.
The term “seventeenth century crisis” was coined in a 1954 edition of
Past and Present by the English Marxist historian Hobsbawm (33–53) and
taken on in the first instance by Trevor-­Roper (1967). More recently,
climate – which was mentioned regularly by historians of the Annales
school but rarely elsewhere – came to be seen as perhaps the most signi-
ficant driving force behind those upheavals gathered under the term
“crisis”. How do we see the role of climate in history and how do we avoid
crude environmental determinism? By exploring the arguments on the
seventeenth century crisis in the context of Mughal India we hope to
answer some of these questions.

The climate of the seventeenth century

For the seventeenth century, no meaningful instrumental weather or
climate observations are available for India or the Indian Ocean region.
Indeed, one of the earliest marine explorations on which a barometer and
thermometer were taken on a vessel with the express interest of making
scientific observations was by Edmund Halley on the sloop HMS Paramore
54   Vinita Damodaran et al.
Pink from England to the South Shetland Islands and back in 1699–1700.
It should be noted that at the time of Halley’s voyage, the barometer was
still in its infancy (invented by Torricelli in 1643), while his thermometer
had a scale devised by Halley himself, and none of the now established
scales – Réaumur, Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin – had been invented.3 As a
consequence, documentary evidence has become a major source of
information on weather and climate across the Indian Ocean and sur-
rounding countries during the seventeenth century. With the ships, devel-
oping colonial land ports, settlements and factories of the trading
companies of the Portuguese, Dutch and English being dominant in the
Indian Ocean region at this time, their surviving registers, journals,
gazettes, diaries, logbooks and the like are the prime sources of weather
and climate information, impacts and extremes. The vast majority of
seventeenth-­century logbooks are in Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and
English repositories, with the great bulk held by the latter two countries.
However, this material has not been recovered, scanned/imaged and digi-
tised to the extent and in the systematic manner that later eighteenth- to
twentieth-­century holdings have been. Projects such as the Climatological
Database for the World’s Oceans (CLIWOC) 1750–1850, the International

Figure 3.1 Geographical coverage of the tracks of English East India Company

(EIC) ships in 900 ship logbooks from 1788–1834 which took instrumen-
tal weather observations (e.g. pressure, air temperature and sea surface
temperature) and have been digitised under ACRE.
Source: Philip Brohan (Met Office).
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   55
Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) post-­1854, the
citizen-­science-based Old Weather (English East India Company [EIC]:
1780s–1830s) and Weather Detective (1888–1903) provide examples of
what might be achieved.4
In 2007/08, a UK Defra under-­spend allowed the International
Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) Initi-
ative (www.met-­acre.org) under the Met Office Hadley Centre climate
programme to fund the scanning of some 900 EIC ship logbooks held in
the British Library containing instrumental weather observations for the
1780s–1830s.5 The historical weather data were subsequently digitised by
the Climate Data Modernization Program (CDMP) in the USA and will
be used in dynamical global 3D weather reconstructions – such as future
extensions of the ACRE-­facilitated Twentieth Century Reanalysis [20CR],
currently covering the period 1850–2010 (www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/
data/20thC_Rean). Such an extension would entail further work under
CLIWOC, the recovery of EIC logbooks stretching back to the beginning
of the seventeenth century, and the extraction and digitisation of the

10
9
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El Niño count

6
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La Niña count

3
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1990s
1520s
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1880s
1890s
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1910s
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1950s
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1980s

Weak Moderate Strong Very strong Extreme

Figure 3.2 ENSO reconstructions: decadal trends in reconstructed El Niño and La

Niña event magnitude characteristics, 1525–2000.
Note
Five percentile classes of the MQ time series were used to classify ENSO magnitude into
extreme (>90th percentile), very strong (70th–90th percentile), strong (50th–70th percentile),
moderate (50th–30th percentile) and weak events (<30th percentile).
Source: Gergis and Fowler (2009).
56   Vinita Damodaran et al.
data – primarily wind direction and force estimates – contained therein.
At present, wind data are not routinely assimilated into 20CR, but plans
are in place to achieve this in the longer term and thus to extend rean-
alyses back into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the incorpo-
ration of paleo/proxy data would also be a significant advance towards
this goal.6
Long historical climatic indices using instrumental, documentary, proxy
data and observations and records most relevant to the Indian Ocean
region have tended to focus mainly on measures of the ENSO phenomena
and the Indian/South Asian Monsoon. Recent examples of each of these
reconstructions are shown in Figure 3.2 and Table 3.1.

Table 3.1 Protracted ENSO episodes

Episodes Years Episodes Years

El Niño
1964–69 6 1791–94 4
1957–59 3 1782–84 3
1937–42 6 1768–71 4
1924–26 3 1746–48 3
1918–20 3 1718–24 7
1911–15 7 1659–61 3
1876–78 3 1650–52 3
1864–66 3 1618–21 4
1856–58 3 1607–09 3
1844–48 5 1585–83 3
1814–17 4 1525–27 3
La Niña
1988–90 3 1808–11 4
1984–86 3 1785–90 6
1970–75 6 1778–80 3
1955–60 6 1750–58 9
1921–23 3 1739–43 5
1916–18 3 1730–1733 4
1907–10 4 1637–39 3
1890–94 5 1622–32 11
1878–80 3 1600–05 6
1870–75 6 1576–81 6
1866–68 3 1571–73 3
1860–64 5 1540–42 3
1847–51 5 1531–33 3
Total 26

Source: Gergis and Fowler (2009).

Note
Protracted CEI ENSO events reconstructed since ad 1525. The seventeenth-century episodes
are shown here: El Niño (bold) and La Niña (bold italics). Following Allan and D’Arrigo
(1999), a protracted episode is defined as persisting for two years or more – only those of
three years or more are shown.
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   57
The ENSO example details the resolution of both reconstructed El
Niño and La Niña events and longer “protracted” El Niño and La Niña
episodes. A protracted episode of either El Niño or La Niña “phase” is
defined as a period of two years or more when measures of the phe-
nomena (Southern Oscillation Index, the Pacific Niño 3 and 4 region sea
surface temperature (SST) anomalies, and various precipitation extremes
(drought or flood) in “ENSO sensitive” regions around the globe) persist.
Shi, Li and Wilson (2014) note that their reconstructed South Asian
summer monsoon index (SASMI) captures 18 of 26 (69 per cent)
reordered historical famine events in India over the last millennium;
notably, 11 of 16 short events with durations of 1–3 years are accurately
depicted in the reconstruction.7 The long history of temperature
anomalies from proxy sources, in Neukom et al. (2014), indicates that the
seventeenth century embraced the peak of the so-­called “Little Ice Age”
(LIA).8 It would appear then that any ability to reconstruct the climate for
this period over the Indian Ocean domain would provide an informative
picture of environmental conditions in this region during the coldest
period in the last millennia.
As a step towards this goal, an investigation was made into the extent
and nature of various palaeoenvironmental/proxy records relating to the
Indian Ocean domain that have been published to date. Broad overviews
around the turn of the twenty-­first century show that proxy data are most
readily available for terrestrial regions around the Indian Ocean, princi-
pally within Africa and Australia. Marine data are available via coral cores
principally from the Pacific basin. Tree ring data is more readily available
for north India and bordering regions. The drought maps for Asian
droughts in Buckley et al. (2014) show the footprint of the historically
important droughts in the period.9 The above data appear to indicate that
the mid-­seventeenth century saw the weakest period of monsoons on
record. The ENSO example details the resolution of both reconstructed
El Niños and La Niñas plus longer protracted episodes of both. In the
seventeenth century, ENSO events occurred every 2.5 years – half the five-­
year average. What impact did these climate events have on India in social
and economic terms?

India, climate and the seventeenth-­century crisis

For the longer part of its history and in the overwhelming majority of texts
produced addressing the issue of the seventeenth-­century “General
Crisis”, the focus has been on Europe. In 1974, Jonathan Israel began to
extend the geographical boundaries of the debate in his work on Mexico
(33–5). Further territorial expansion was slow to materialise – largely due,
no doubt, to a general move away from structuralist thinking. Indeed, it
was more than a decade before the Ming/Qing transition in China was
first considered in this connection by Frederick Wakeman (1986), and not
58   Vinita Damodaran et al.
until 1990 that a special edition of Modern Asian Studies, presenting four
articles – all economic histories – on “The General Crisis in East Asia”,
introduced to General Crisis theory the study of highly developed eco-
nomies such as Japan, Indonesia and India. Contributions to this volume
from Anthony Reid and William Atwell looked at South-­East and East Asia
respectively, John Richards considered the period in Mughal India, while
Neils Steensgaard discussed “unity in Eurasian history” (cf. Parker and
Smith, 1978). Two key commonalities can be drawn out of this phase of
the historiography in which the debate moved into Asia. First, the notion
of the Crisis as a fundamental transformation between epochs, era or epis-
temes, between old and new, which dominates the historiography of the
crisis in Europe, faded as identification became more a matter of noting
the coincidence of a sufficient number of negative incidents, encompass-
ing a broad enough geography and sufficiently diverse areas of human
life. Second, the downturn in global temperatures which became known
as the LIA began to be seen – in the first instance by the Annales school –
as a significant factor in bringing about the crisis.
The LIA is associated with two periods of unusually low sunspot activity,
the Spörer Minimum (1450–1540) and the Maunder Minimum
(1645–1715). Both solar minimums coincided with the coldest years of the
LIA in parts of Europe. According to these climate-­focussed histories, in
the mid-­fourteenth century, violent climate oscillations halved Europe’s
population and caused severe depopulation in Asia. A subsequent period
of warming was followed by another dramatic cooling, peaking in the mid-­
seventeenth century. These cooler average temperatures prevailed from
the end of the Medieval Warm Period up until the beginning of our con-
temporary era of global warming. Returning to Parker, we note that he
does not engage in the wider debate and uses the LIA label to refer to cli-
matic conditions between 1610 and the winter of 1708–09. He argues that
three natural forces combine in this period to generate cooler temperat-
ures and greater climatic variability, reduced solar energy being only one
of them, increased volcanic activity and a greater frequency of El Niño
being the other two (Parker, 2013).
According to Parker, the period is coincident with anomalies in ENSO
currents which operate in two distinct phases alternating over a period of
roughly 2–7 years. These phases are characterised by warming in the trop-
ical Pacific and the Indian Ocean, often suppressing rainfall in the western
Pacific in the case of El Niño – the converse being true in the case of La
Niña. ENSO events vary widely in their manner of expression, centres of
action, duration and magnitude, but are typically accompanied by extreme
weather events. The link between ENSO and the Asian Monsoon is
important here, as is that between SSTs in the Indian Ocean and those in
the Pacific (Damodaran et al., 2015). The mid-­seventeenth century saw the
weakest period of monsoons on record and in the seventeenth century
ENSO events happened twice as often as on average. In fact, the period
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   59
saw the weakest East Asian monsoons of the past two millennia. It has at
times been suggested that ENSO events can also trigger volcanic eruptions
and that the global footprint of ENSO events included three regions
besides the land adjoining the Pacific, with the Caribbean suffering floods,
Ethiopia and north-­west India experiencing drought and Europe suffering
hard winters.
We now come to the question of “Crisis” in India. The years of the LIA
coincide well with those of the Mughal Empire, and Parker has argued
that “although Europe and East Asia formed the heartland of the General
Crisis, the Mughal Empire … also experienced episodes of severe political
disruption in the mid-­seventeenth century” resulting in widespread viol-
ence. According to Parker, the Mughal Empire can be seen as having
“come close to revolution … in the 1650s, while the seventeenth century
as a whole [was] … a period in which wars were fought almost continu-
ously”. Droughts, floods and famines, particularly in the late 1620s and
early 1630s, in Gujarat and the Deccan are also cited as examples of
upheaval.10
The main event by which Parker attempts to bring Mughal India into
the fold of the “General Crisis” is the 1658–62 war of succession. Coinci-
dence of war and monsoon failure are seen to create particularly difficult

1560 1580 1600 1620 1640 1660 1680 1700 1720 1740 1760
War Disease
Socio-political upheaval ENSO event
Famine Hurricane/extreme wind or rain
Earthquake Flood
Volcano Drought

Figure 3.3 Plot for India for the period 1560–1760 which allows identification of
groupings and coincidences between various occurrences and events
born of both natural and human causes.
60   Vinita Damodaran et al.
conditions for the Indian population in the late 1650s and early 1660s;
however, one should note that famine reports are mainly anecdotal and
sometimes highly subjective: “people [are] dying daily … the living hardly
able to bury the dead” (in Parker, 2013).
The Mughal ruler Akbar’s reign was dominated by major famines in
Gujarat in 1556 and in 1595, lasting three years. Abul Fazl, the court
historian, describing the horrors of this famine, noted that the mortality
was great: “Man ate their own kin and the streets were blocked with
corpses” (in Agarwal, 1983: 24). ‘Abd al-­Qādir Badā’ūnī, another con-
temporary historian, noted that the whole country was deserted and no
husbandmen remained to till the ground (ibid.: 23). In 1595, when
another famine caused by the failure of rains affected northern India,
especially Kashmir and Lahore, Jesuit missionaries reported that the
streets of Lahore were blocked with human corpses (Agarwal, 2006: 30).
In 1618–19 there was famine in the Deccan and on the Coromandal coast
(ibid.: 31). The traveller Methwold, who left the East coast in 1622, wrote
of the ravages of the famine in Vijaynagara (1926: xiii). In the reign of
Shah Jahan, during the protracted La Niña episode in 1630–31, a severe
famine occurred which affected Golconda, Ahmednagar and parts of
Malwa. In these years no rain fell in the Mughal territories of the Deccan
or Gujarat and the drought was followed by severe floods (Lāhawrī, I,
1867: 362; Ray and Kuzhippalli Skaria, 2002: 132). The middle of the
seventeenth century, as noted, had seen the weakest period of monsoons
on record and the rains failed in 1646 and 1647. Heavy mortality was
reported from Pulicat and Madras and it was recorded that half the people
in the area of Nagapatnam were dead and the stench of the dead and
dying bodies was terrifying (Foster, 1906: xxvii). The first year of
Aurangzeb’s reign was likewise marked by intense famine causing unspeak-
able suffering in Northern and Central India. Colonel Tod noted: “There
was no longer distinction of caste, Sudra and Brahmin were indistinguish-
able. Men ate men” (in Agarwal, 2006: 36), cities were depopulated, and
Bihar experienced severe famine in 1671 which encouraged the slave
trade. In 1687 there was another severe famine in Golconda. The month
of June 1687 saw floods and the city of Hyderabad was depopulated,
houses, rivers and plains filled with corpses. In 1704–07 another great
famine hit the Deccan but proved less severe (Agarwal, 2006: 36).
On the face of it, then, Parker’s emphasis of climatic drivers in this
period of Mughal history appears justified by contemporary descriptions.
However, it should be pointed out that the usefulness of such descriptions,
without supporting statistical or demographic data or at least estimates of
numbers of people affected is questionable. Furthermore, the reliability
of, in particular European descriptions, has been strongly questioned by
work on the development of tropes in famine reporting of the period
(Agarwal, 1983: 21–78). Lack of comparative and contextual data on
monsoon failure also leaves Parker’s argument somewhat open to criticism
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   61
– details of how common these were, their geographic extent, how long
they lasted, what traditional coping mechanisms existed, what social and
administrative contingencies were in place, are needed in order to form
any accurate idea of the meaning and significance of monsoon failure in
general, and of specific droughts for Indian society. Parker’s claim of
“exceptional violence” in the seventeenth century as a whole sits in some
contrast to the historiography. For example, John F. Richards, Irfan
Habib, and others, have described the seventeenth century as a period of
relative calm and stability. That Parker can point to near continuous
warfare is not in itself proof of exceptionalism in a rapidly expanding and
militaristic early modern empire, which, throughout its existence, failed to
define solid boundaries and was always involved either in expansion or
suppression of rebellion somewhere in its vast territory (Edwards and
Garrett, 1974; Gommans, 2002; Balabanlilar, 2012).
John F. Richards saw no evidence of a seventeenth-­century crisis in
India, identifying, instead, continuity and prosperity which endured well
into the following century when the region experienced a distinct and
unrelated eighteenth-­century crisis as Mughal emperors lost power to local
lords and, later, the EIC. Richards’ conclusions are not very different from
those reached some 30 years earlier by the distinguished economic
historian of early modern India, Irfan Habib, in his work The Agrarian
System of Mughal India. For Habib, it was the strength of the Mughal
Empire as an administrative unit which was its most remarkable feature;
the revolt of 1580 and the Rajput revolt a century later being practically
the only points at which the elite or the theocracy made any play of con-
testing the power of the semi-­divine monarch. Moreover, Habib holds –
contrary to Parker – that in the light of the refusal of contesting parties to
ever discuss or consider partition, the wars of succession beginning in
1628, 1658 and 1707, should be viewed not as moments of weakness or
near collapse, but as markers of the remarkable durability and cohesion of
the empire (Habib, 1963).
According to Habib, Mughal military supremacy afforded security and
stability – albeit accompanied by violent suppression and coercion of the
masses of peasants and workers – and the extreme, if impermanent, power
afforded to the emperor via the Jagirdari system of delegated revenue col-
lection. This system rendered the Mansabdars “completely dependent on
the will of the Emperor” (317), and allowed for the collection of taxes
which reduced the populace to bare subsistence, producing enormous
and highly concentrated wealth for a small elite (320). The system was,
however, fundamentally flawed. Multiple layers of delegation in tax collec-
tion, the regular relocation of regional administrators, and a lack of
central control over these zamindārs, who were seen as the primary threat
to order in the empire, left the system open to exploitation whereby the
masses suffered enormously at the expense of the various layers of the elite
(320–2). In time, some local lords – particularly in Hindustan – began to
62   Vinita Damodaran et al.
rebel against centralised power, refusing to pass on revenue. Poor and sub-
jugated elements were drawn to rebellious regions by more tolerable and
equitable conditions, and thus the power of rebellious elements grew
(366). By the mid–late seventeenth century the Jat, and later the Maratha,
revolts had become a significant threat to imperial order – they would
eventually be its undoing (346) – yet these were slowly developing and
evolving states of confrontation, which spread gradually, slowly eroding
centralised power, rather than a well-­defined crisis prompting its collapse
(346–99).
For David Clingingsmith and Jeffery Williamson (2008), it was again the
eighteenth century which witnessed the most significant upheavals in
India’s economic and political structure. Herein, it was seen that the
turmoil accompanying the dissolution of the Mughal Empire, into a con-
stellation of smaller states and their forced regrouping under the EIC,
frustrated commerce and industry, leading to economic decline. Even
here, however, the notion of crisis, and even of economic decline itself,
remains controversial and is far from settled as an historic fact. Work by
Chris Bayly (1993), Muzaffar Alam (1998) and Peter Marshall (1982) lays
emphasis on continuity rather than disruption, with Mughal administra-
tive units seen to remain largely intact, pre-­existing growth trajectories are
maintained (Clingingsmith and Williamson, 2008: 211), and the only
major change is in the amount of money passed on by local powers to
central Mughal administration. It was, furthermore, in the latter part of
this era – the years 1700 to 1760 – that India peaked as a manufacturing
centre (ibid.: 223).
In light of the apparent historiographical consensus that the seven-
teenth century was a time of relative calm in the Mughal Empire and that
major upheaval did not occur until the early–mid-­eighteenth century,
Parker’s attempt to extend the crisis into the subcontinent are considered,
at present, somewhat tenuous and, at the very least, in need of a more
solid evidential basis. Parker’s arguments in the case of India appear to be
open to exactly the same criticisms as those levelled at the arguments of
Hobsbawm, Trevor-­Roper, and others beyond the 1960s: that levels
of upheaval were simply not that exceptional and continuity in systems of
power was more marked than transformation. What makes these weather
anomalies different from those a century earlier or a century later? Parker
asserts that “the seventeenth century experienced extremes of weather
seldom witnessed before … and never so far since” (2013: 112). In his ana-
lysis the LIA is decisive, intervening in historical processes, influencing the
outcome of battles and destroying empires. The claim requires com-
parative and quantitative evidence and more detailed work on documen-
tary and paleo sources. Furthermore, in terms of climate, it is important to
note that impacts are always asymmetric; simplistic notions such as weak or
strong monsoons or intense ENSO episodes take no account of the possib-
ilities of variation in mode of expression and centres of action of these
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   63
climate events. A more useful approach, then, is one that focuses on
regional and national differences and the resilience of agricultural pro-
duction in the face of population pressure, exogenous shocks and environ-
mental change. Famine causation is complex and links between drought
and famine in the early modern period need to be reassessed. There is a
clear incentive to develop a database that will help improve famine,
climate, disease, wage and price series for South Asia and the Indian
Ocean world for 1500–1900, which are currently woefully inadequate.

Drought, famine and causality in eighteenth-­century India

The following section discusses famines in eighteenth-­century India, the
study of which – through contemporary and near contemporary reports –
is disruptive of simplistic, climate-­led causalities, often assumed in the
work of Parker and other historians looking to establish links between
anomalous climatic conditions and societal upheaval.
Between 1765, when the British EIC took over Bengal, and 1858, the
region experienced 12 famines and 4 severe scarcities. From the late eight-
eenth century, many Indian communities were disturbed by the interven-
tions of the EIC and their revenue and agricultural regimes, which
increased taxation, encouraged sedentarisation and attempted to restrict
raids, hunting and nomadism. One commentator wrote that

the oppressions of India … under the rapine and cruelties of the ser-
vants of the company have now reached England and there is a
clamour here … to such monopolies were imputed the late famine in
Bengal and the loss of 3 million inhabitants.
(Walpole, I, 1910: 72; cf. Damodaran, 2007: 149; 2015)

Knowledge of the ecological basis of various peasant economies is critical

to the understanding of the capacity of certain communities to withstand
drought and famine. The famine of 1770 was one such, where – whilst
weather played a role – the actions of the company, particularly in relation
to taxation, turned localised scarcity into full-­blown crisis. The famine of
1770 was preceded by a partial failure of the monsoon in Bengal and Bihar
in 1768, 1769–70 was a year of dearth, commentators noted that the fields
of rice had become like fields of straw, mortality and beggary exceeded all
expectation, and many surviving peasants migrated to Nepal where the
state was less confiscatory. More revenue was collected in 1770–71 than in
1769–70 and no remissions were granted by the EIC. Rain in September
1770 brought some relief, but came too late to avert depopulation; the
crisis was further compounded by the outbreak of smallpox which became
epidemic, killing millions. By May 1770, one-­third of the population was
calculated to have disappeared; in June, the deaths were returned as six
out of every sixteen, and it was predicted that half of the cultivators and
64   Vinita Damodaran et al.
payers of revenue had perished. Final mortality estimates by some com-
mentators reached 10 million.
The failure of a single crop, following one year of dearth, had wiped
out millions. The monsoon was on time in the next few years but the
economy of Bengal had been dramatically transformed and agricultural
classes decimated. Amongst lime workers in Birbhum, mortality was espe-
cially high, with only 5/150 surviving. Mortality was also high among the
non-­agricultural workers such as weavers, spinners, and boatmen. As many
as 1500 communities out of 6000 in the Birbhum region were destroyed,
and Birbhum itself reverted to jungle inhabited by wild beasts. In the years
subsequent to the famine, starving peasants with no seed or implements,
burnt, pillaged and plundered in bands of 50–1000 men, provoking the
Sanyasi rebellion led by fakirs and mendicants. To summarise: it is the cul-
tural, societal, political and economic factors which loom large in this cau-
sality – while the winter of 1772 was perhaps unusually severe, climate
appears to have played a relatively insignificant role in the development of
what remains one of India’s most disastrous and costly famines.
Two late-­eighteenth-century EIC reports reveal further issues relating to
famine reporting and causality. The first, Danvers’ A Century of Famine, is
interesting not merely as a source on meteorology and famine chronology
in India, but also contains much which allows us to place climate and par-
ticularly rainfall variation within a larger causal framework. Danvers
stated that

famines in India have arisen from several different causes … the most
general cause has been the failure of rains. Distress has also, however,
been caused by hostile invasions; by swarms of rats or locusts [or ants
in the case of the 1790–91 famine in Kach], by storms and floods; and
not infrequently by the immigration of starving people from distant
distressed parts, into districts otherwise well provided with food sup-
plies; and excessive exports of grain into famine stricken districts, or
by combination of two or more of the above named circumstances.
(Danvers, 1877: 1)

However, Danvers’ key, but perhaps counter-­intuitive, observation (pre-

dicting Amartya Sen) is that most deaths in times of famine were not
caused by actual shortage of food: “It is an important fact”, he states, “that
famines in India are more generally famines of work than of actual
absence of food throughout any large extent of the country” (ibid.: 2).
Danvers’ point then is that the causal link between lack of rains and
famine is more complex than might be assumed. The problem is often not
that insufficient rains lead to poor local harvests and subsequent shortage
of food. It is more that lack of rain disrupts agricultural employment
patterns and leaves poorer workers without sufficient money to purchase
food. Danvers continues on this topic to describe how “from a study of the
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   65
history of past famines it appears that these visitations are almost as liable
to be caused by unseasonable rains, or by their unequal distribution, as by
deficient amount of rainfall during the year”. He concludes by stating that
“there are altogether so many circumstances connected with rainfall and
its influence on the crops that it is difficult to arrive at any definite conclu-
sion as to the actual proportionate deficiency of rain that would constitute
a famine drought” (ibid.). A glance at Danvers’ map of areas affected by
famine (here reduced in Figure 3.4 from its original coverage to the
period 1770–1825 only) shows the asymmetry of famine distribution. Even
this half-­century of frequent famines displays vast areas that remained
completely immune. Danvers’ map then, much like his report, points to a
markedly complex relationship between deficient rains and significant
social impact.
The second of the two major sources here considered, George Camp-
bell’s Extracts from Records in the India Office Relating to Famines in India
1769–1788 (IOR, V/27/830/14), was published in 1868 and gives details
of the famine around Madras in 1782, primarily driven by warfare in the
area: “when the enemy was at their walls, and by his ravage, in every part
of the adjacent country, had destroyed the cattle and reduced the inhabit-
ants to the most pressing difficulty to obtain the common necessaries of
life.” A note from Bengal in the 1783–84 famine is particularly interesting
for the light it shines on the experience and cultural construction of
drought, famine and scarcity in the region and the period. A letter
describes how the “shocking experience” of the 1770 famine “still fresh in
the memories of most people” combined with the shipment of vast quant-
ities of grain to Madras in the preceding seasons left Bengal vulnerable to
artificial shortages (Campbell, 1868: 114–15).

Figure 3.4 Map of famine areas in India, 1770–1825.

66   Vinita Damodaran et al.
Perhaps the most valuable section of this collection is the one contain-
ing details of the famine and general upheaval caused by a series of storms
in 1787. Several sources reported on this event: an article in The Nautical
Magazine recorded that “Captain Huddart describes one [storm] which
destroyed ten thousand persons in the neighbourhood of Coringa, in May,
1787, and penetrated twenty miles over the country” (1832: 293). William
Roxburgh noted a major loss of his papers, including those on various
plant species in his collection, as a result of this event:

I had made and noted down many observations on its uses, when in
large practice in the General Hospital at Madras in 1776, 77 and 78,
but lost them, with all my other papers, by the storm and inundation
at and near Coringa in May 1787.
(1832: 34)

The Madras typhoon of May 1787 was one of a series of very severe
storms which occurred that year in Bengal. Reports of floods from the
General Letter from India of 15 December 1787, describe a “violent inunda-
tion” of which the author states that

no memory can recollect any preceding instance of similar inunda-

tions […] the distress occasioned by the inundation was aggravated by
a storm which happened on the 2nd ultimo, [i.e. November] and
which, wherever it prevailed, destroyed much of the existing crops.
(Campbell, 1868: 142)

An important point here with regard to the meteorological record is that

the second storm (along with others described below), which occurred in
November, exacerbated the already difficult situation caused by the
typhoon in May. This second disaster made the problems associated with
the first much more difficult to recover from. The governor general, Lord
Cornwallis, was suspicious of false claims, warning that “it will be the duty
of the board of revenue to make the most scrupulous investigations, and
to reject every ill-­founded claim for deductions”. Again an embargo on
export was put in place, now for six months (ibid.: 141). More disparities
emerged in the aftermath of the flood and storms. Grain prices were very
high in Murshidabad and Dhaka, in particular, “where sufferings of the
poor inhabitants were the greater”, but much more normal in Benares
and Bihar “where the crops had been abundant”; thus exports from these
regions to the affected areas were encouraged. In addition to the Madras
event in 1787–88, other reports recorded early and abnormally heavy rains
in Bengal and Bihar. Through “the latter part of March to the latter half
of July, they had continued with such violence as almost to render cultiva-
tion impossible.” A government-­imposed ban on grain exports was cred-
ited with resolving the situation by June 1788 (ibid.: 21).11
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   67
By 1 June 1788, the General Letter could state “that the distresses which
have been suffered by the scarcity of grain, in different parts of the
country and particularly in Dacca, have been of late much relieved”. The
proceedings of the revenue board reveal the internal conflict over the con-
tinuation of collections through times of scarcity. As shown above, Corn-
wallis was resigned to the fact that remission would be necessary, but
aimed to scrupulously investigate any suspected false claims. W. Hindman,
an acting collector, wrote on 20 July 1787 that since the 11th:

… rains have continued with a violence hitherto unknown, and, it

grieves me to inform you, that by the advice I have received from the
Mofussil [rural areas], I am apprehensive of a total depopulation of all
the pergunnahs [subdistricts], if the weather does not soon moderate
… about two thirds of the ryots [peasants] have retired for safety with
their families to the hills and others are following daily, whole villages
have been swept away.
(Campbell, 1868: 152)

He continued:

… it is impossible for language to convey the distressful situation of

this province; where ever you go you see nothing but a sheet of water,
with here or there the tops of houses and trees. Whole crops have
been levelled and villages, cattle, grain, and implements of husbandry
swept away. Many of the inhabitants have been drowned and whole
pergunnahs deserted … the small islands before the city of Dacca are
entirely overflowed, and only a few of the tops of the houses are to be
seen, the oldest inhabitants remember nothing like it … The overflow-
ing [of the] banks of the Berhamputer [Brahmaputra], a circum-
stance never known before, has certainly occasioned this dreadful
inundation.
(Ibid.)

The collector of Chittagong reported that “the deluge of rain which has
recently fallen in these parts exceeds, I am given to understand, the
memory of the oldest inhabitants” (ibid.: 147–53). Campbell’s collection
shows how very severe weather difficulties – again and again made worse
by repeated storms, and very likely combined with administrative determi-
nation to continue tax collection to the greatest possible extent – left great
want and dislocation amongst the poor. The collector of Nuddea wrote in
September 1787 that:

The rivers which run through this district have risen to so alarming a
height that I should consider myself deficient in my duty did I omit to
communicate the intelligence to you; the Jellingy in particular, which
68   Vinita Damodaran et al.
passes by this place has swelled to such a degree that there are few
parts where its banks are not overflowed on both sides and to judge
from my own observation and the opinion of people here, it must be
at least two feet higher than it was in the rains of 1785, and then it was
higher than the oldest inhabitants had ever remembered it.
(Campbell, 1868: 175–7)

At the end of that month “vast torrents” were recorded in Midnapore by

which “those poor creatures that survived the calamity have lost everything
in the world” (ibid.). Similar reports came from Burdwan, Sarun in the
west to Sylhet, and Rungapore in the east (ibid.: 185). Numerous collec-
tors wrote to the Board of Revenue warning that the population could not
support regular tax collections. In some cases, the Board permitted collec-
tors to exercise discretion, but in other cases remittance was refused.
Danvers’ and Campbell’s collections of famine reports appear to show a
significant increase in climate-­related societal difficulties during the
1780s–1790s. Although the 1770 famine was extremely severe, no other
famines are described for the remainder of the 1770s, whereas a total of
six notable famines are described between 1780 and 1791 (including the
Doji Bara and Chalisa famines), none in the remainder of the 1790s, two
in the 1800s and two in the 1810s. All of the 1780s famines were in part
born of climatic irregularities, although as described above, through
notably complex causal links. The most frequent climatic contribution was
lack of rain, but disruptions to the expected timing of rain, excessive rain,
and a notable season of extreme storms, floods, and intense winds in 1787
also contributed to famine when they occurred. Campbell’s collection of
reports on the storms of 1787 add much detail to previous knowledge of
the May typhoon and suggest that areas of Bengal were struck repeatedly
by dramatic storms and floods of an extent not known in living memory.
Such reports appear to support Allan et al.’s (2003) and Gergis and
Fowler’s (2009) identification of a more extended La Niña episode begin-
ning in mid-­decade.
Although statistical data are absent, Danvers’ qualitative assessment of
the 1790–92 famines suggests they were the most severe of the period.
However, it would be impossible from the information contained here to
assess their impact in relation to the 1770 famine, which Campbell in 1868
– with the benefit of hindsight – referred to as “the Great Famine of
1770”. Significant evidence not found elsewhere indicates that at least in
some regions the 1790–92 famine was remarkable in its impact, thus sup-
porting Grove’s identification of intense ENSO activity at this time (Grove,
1998). These include: reports of direct governmental famine relief
through the distribution of rice, the institution of employment pro-
grammes through public works, subjective judgements of its extreme
severity, descriptions of the failure of rains, and of resort to suicide and
eating of children.
 Climate signals, environment, livelihoods   69
Conclusion
This chapter has argued that the idea of a climate-­induced seventeenth-­
century crisis for India requires more detailed mining of documentary
and paleo sources – both in terms of time and space – for comparative
and quantitative evidence. The establishment of true exceptionalism,
both in terms of climate anomalies and societal, cultural, political and
economic transformation, needs more evidence. Furthermore, it has
underlined that famine causation is complex, and that whilst climate is
often an important factor, its impact is always geographically and demo-
graphically asymmetric. Simplistic notions such as weak or strong mon-
soons or intense ENSO episodes take no account of possible variation in
mode of expression and centres of action of these climate events, or of
the determining role played by governmental action such as tax relief,
grain embargoes and employment programmes. A more useful
approach, then, is one that focuses on regional and national differences
and the resilience of agricultural production in the face of population
pressure, exogenous shocks and environmental changes, a project which
calls for – in the first instance – the establishment of a comprehensive
database of sources that will help us construct clear famine, climate,
disease, wage and price series for South Asia.

Notes
1 See Le Roy Ladurie, 1971; Atwell, 2001. A window into recent developments in
Chinese climate history is Marks, 1998; see also Zhang and Lin, 1992, which
includes abundant historical information.
2 The seventeenth-­century crisis was perhaps also linked to strong El Niños that
produced withering droughts and famines in much of south and south-­east
Asia in 1614–16, 1623–24, 1629–32, 1660–62 and 1685–88. The last was one of
the most pronounced El Niños in recorded history. See also Grove, 2002.
3 Cited by Rob Allan of the MET office, Hadley Centre, who worked jointly with the
authors of the paper on a McGill University, Montreal, funded project on the
seventeenth-­century crisis. See also his initiative, International Atmospheric
Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) Initiative (www.met-­acre.org).
4 Climatological Database for the World’s Oceans (CLIWOC) 1750–1850 (http://
webs.ucm.es/info/cliwoc/intro.htm). A European Union-­funded project which
ran from 2001to 2003. See also www.weatherdetective.net.au/about.
5 This climate data is provided by Rob Allan. Some of the EIC sources he con-
sulted include: Edward Terry (Chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe), A Relation of Sir
Thomas Roe’s voyage into the East Indies (1665); Foster Rhea Dulles, Eastward Ho!
The First English Adventurers to the Orient. Richard Chancellor – Anthony Jenkinson
– James Lancaster – William Adams – Sir Thomas Roe, etc. [With Plates, Including
Portraits.] (London: John Lane, 1931); Thomas Roe, Sir Thomas Roe’s Journal of
His Voyage to the East Indies and Observations There During His Residence at the
Mogul’s Court as Embassador from King James the First of England (1732).
6 For a version of Figure 3.1 in colour, see Damodaran, Allan, and Hamilton (2015),
unpublished paper, Food Security and the Environment in India and Britain
Workshop (http://foodsecurity.exeter.ac.uk/wp-­content/uploads/2015/09/
17th-century.pdf).
70   Vinita Damodaran et al.
7 See figure 3 in Shi et al. (2014), where the grey periods indicate the 26 famine
events identified in India over the past millennium (www.nature.com/articles/
srep06739).
8 See figure 3 in Neukom et al. (2014), “Extreme periods” (www.nature.com/
articles/nclimate2174).
9 See figure 4 in Buckley et al. (2014) www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/
pii/S0277379114001462?via%3Dihub.
10 The 1630s Gujarat famine is discussed by Mukherjee in Chapter 4 of this book.
11 In Chapter 5, Bhattacharya reconstructs in detail the effect of the 1788 disasters
on local ecologies and economies.
Part II
Roads and rivers
4 Famine chorography
Peter Mundy and the Gujarat
famine, 1630–32
Ayesha Mukherjee

In 1556, a famine inaugurated the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar

(Fazl, 2015–19, 3: 105–7) – part of a series of subsistence crises that
occurred in India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whose
chronology runs uncannily parallel to that of similar crises in Britain from
the 1550s onwards (Hoskins, 1964, 1968; Walter and Schofield, 1989;
Habib, 1963, 1999; Moosvi, 1987, 2008; Datta, 2000; Grove and Chapell,
2000). As the previous chapter has argued, global climatic conditions offer
a possible explanation for this chronological correspondence.1 Literature
of complaint, in the English context, referred constantly to climatic anom-
alies, presenting them as flagella Dei, afflictions sent by God, which pro-
duced famine and dearth (Walter and Wrightson, 1976; Walsham, 1999).
Similarly, in India, official Persian chronicles and popular vernacular liter-
ature, such as the Bengali Mangalkavya, expressed climatic anxieties
(Parker 2013; Dasgupta, 2000). In Britain and India, there developed local
and state-­guided discourses of famine, incorporating concerns about
climate, place, and mobility, whose strategies of representation, this
chapter argues, had a spatial basis. Potential interactions between these
discourses need investigation. During a difficult phase of English famine,
marked by four disastrous harvests from 1594 to 1597, the average wheat
price rose 83 per cent above the norm, and the nation saw increased levels
of vagrancy, destitution, and food riots, especially in the uplands of the
north and west, which suffered owing to the inaccessibility of markets.
Anonymous parish register entries show that bodies of the displaced rural
poor migrating south and east were found under hedges, in barns, or on
the roadside. There was a substantial increase in deaths, arguably, from
starvation and inferior diet (Walter, 1989; Mukherjee, A., 2015). This
context may seem remote from that of East India Company traders travel-
ling through famine-­affected Mughal provinces; but this chapter aims to
show that perceptions of Indian topography, economy, and ecology
among early Company employees were not driven by ecologically naive
expectations of finding infinite resources elsewhere to displace environ-
mental anxieties stirred by the experience of dearth or famine in their
own land. Their experience of the Indian environment was more complex,
74   Ayesha Mukherjee
shaped by travelling through the land, and by interaction with local eco-
nomies, communities, and knowledge networks, to which they would have
brought their own local understanding and experience of dearth.
A wider aim of this book is to examine the emergence of early notions
of food security, and this chapter will focus on perceptions of space and
place as driving factors for early modern British understandings of alter-
nating dearth and plenty in India. East India Company employees, like the
Cornishman Peter Mundy, were constantly on the move, whether by sea or
on land, and experienced mobility as an endemic condition (Fumerton,
2006: 1–11).2 Their narratives of travel and economic crisis in India
adapted developing modes of representing domestic mobility in Britain,
and constructed what I will call “famine chorographies”. The chapter thus
begins by tracing key elements of the discourse of space, place, and mobil-
ity in early modern Britain and Mughal India, drawing attention to their
potential intersections as well as radical differences. It will then examine
how local English discourses of space, mobility, and dearth were reapplied
to describe travel in India, using Mundy’s text and narration during the
notorious Gujarat famine of 1630–32 as a case study. This famine is also
described in the Mughal courtly chronicles, the Pādshāh nāmas, using very
different representational strategies, which are here placed in dialogue
with Mundy’s account, in an attempt to understand the cross-­culturally
informed socio-­economic discourses that shaped the construction of
famine narrative and remedy.

Discourses of space, place, and mobility

The political model of social and spatial organisation that assumed the
English nation was divided into stable, self-­sufficient communities was
reinforced by the monarch and legal statutes and structures like the
Statute of Artificers and the Poor Laws. These regulated domestic mobility
by rhetorically encoding the assumption that England had a settled popu-
lation, each labourer had his superior, and each pauper an identifiable
place of residence so that neighbours could take responsibility for their
relief (Appleby, 1978: 29; Hindle, 2001: 45–6; Slack, 1988, 1992). James I’s
well-­known formulation saw this static sense of place, surveyed and gov-
erned by the monarch, as a reflection of order in the natural world – “as
every fish lives in his owne place, some in the fresh, some in salt, some in
the mud, so let every one live in his owne place, some at Court, some in
the Citie, some in the Country” (James VI and I, in Somerville, ed., 1994:
227). Such formulations raise the question of what travelling may have
meant in this context, legally and theoretically. Was it regarded as a variety
of vagrancy or migration? Vagrancy legislation could be brutal to the dis-
placed, aiming to resettle vagrants in the parish where they were born.
John Taylor the Water Poet, in his Pennyles Pilgrimage (1618), describing a
journey on foot from London to Edinburgh, carefully distinguished
 Famine chorography   75
himself from beggars and vagrants, defining himself as a “travailer on
foot”. Conscious of the problems of sustaining this distinction, he also
published a pamphlet defending beggars (1621).
In practice, keeping everyone “in his owne place” proved unenforcea-
ble. Statutory definitions of settlement were subject to local debate as dis-
tinctions between “vagrants” and “migrants” remained elusive. As Steve
Hindle argues, legal ambivalences and variations in local rural practice
meant that cases ultimately relied on the discretion of parish officials, who,
in the first half of the seventeenth century, were not entitled to remove
the poor simply because they were destitute or chargeable; but by 1662,
settlement laws allowed officers to pre-­emptively remove indigents who
might become chargeable to the parish (Hindle, 2004: 306–10; Fumerton,
2006: 12–33; cf. Dyer, 2007). If the momentum of the legislation from
1589 onwards ensured the replacement of traditional practices of undif-
ferentiated charity with parish-­bound support, attempted to create classifi-
cations for defining “rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars”, reinforced
“parochial xenophobia”, and turned placelessness itself into a crime
(McRae, 1996: 95; Slack, 1988: 25; Hindle, 2004: 319), there were many
counter-­pressures upon this system – not least from the plying of trades
that were crucial to mercantile exchange on which the economy’s nascent
capitalism relied.
Watermen (like Taylor), tinkers, pedlars, carriers, chapmen, and other
workers whose trade demanded mobility, and who were regarded with
continuous suspicion, nevertheless constituted a range of “petty traders”
who were beginning to extend markets beyond localised boundaries and
arguably creating the basis for a consumer society.3 They were also, I
would argue, creating mechanisms for coping with dearth. In this milieu,
Taylor’s attempts to distinguish between beggars and travellers, or pedlars
and carriers, and his efforts to map the movements of the latter suggest a
parallel cultural impetus to realign the place of mobile traders within the
geographical and socio-­economic landscape of England. Taylor’s work in
the 1620s and 1630s challenged traditional perceptions of markets as regu-
lated spaces, and the authorities’ concerns about idle beggary and the
“undeserving” poor. The Carriers Cosmographie (1637) provided the first
guide to private carriers operating on standard routes between London
and the provinces. In his preface, Taylor claimed his information was gath-
ered with “Toyle” by interviewing (often hostile) carriers, hostellers, and
porters. The verbal mapping of routes was a standard feature of his work,
and The Pennyles Pilgrimage had, through this process, realigned traditional
codes of hospitality as facilitators of mobility (McRae, 2009). Taylor’s
beggars, traders, and travellers were dynamic entities and, inverting con-
temporary diatribes against vagrants, “enemie to Idlenesse”. Travel and
industry were aligned, as McRae argues, especially in relation to his own
quotidian travel as a waterman, in his address to the river Thames: “Thou
the true rules of Justice doth observe,/To feed the lab’rer, let the idle
76   Ayesha Mukherjee
sterve” (1630: 75). English domestic travel literature, in other words, could
ascribe positive value to travel or travail, operating in conjunction with
practical manuals – like Hugh Platt’s Remedies against Famine (1596) and
food and drink for mariners (1607) – which created itineraries for labour
specific to conditions of dearth (Mukherjee, A., 2015: 39–42).
The seventeenth-­century Mughal state, meanwhile, had its own means
of creating the myth that places (and people) could be made obedient to
the emperor’s will. The peripatetic mobility embedded in Mughal court
culture (Lal, 2005: 70; Gronke, 1992: 18–22; Balabanlilar, 2012: 71–84)
reflected, paradoxically, a desire for static order, and reinforced the
unchanging centrality of the emperor’s authority. No place was ultimately
more authoritative than the emperor in person: as long as he and his
court moved, everyone else kept their place. Reliance on peripateticism to
consolidate imperial identity, power, and stability was partly a dynastic
inheritance from the nomadic mobility of the displaced royal courts of
Timur and his successors (Balabanlilar, 2012; Gronke, 1992). Indeed, the
first Mughal emperor Babur described his life of constant warfare and
exile as a state of “vagabondage” (qazāqliqlārda) and continuous “interreg-
num” (fatratlārda),4 while the court of his son Humayun became a mobile
imperial “camp” (urdū-i mu ‘allā), which fostered nomadic trade to
support itself (Balabanlilar, 2012: 73; Bābur, 1995: 16 and 1996: 21;
Bernier, 1934: 365; Monserrate, 1922: 108). Traces of this survived during
the reigns of later Mughal princes, quick to recognise political advantages
of mobility. However, their massively scaled, grand migrations across the
land, similar to the progress and pageantry of English monarchs, starkly
contrasted with the train of caravans and its mixed social groups that char-
acterised famine migrations of the kind described by Mundy, who, never-
theless, observed and even sketched such a progress of the “great Mogul”
Shahjahan (Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson A.315, inserted f.68v–69r).
Imperial peripateticism in seventeenth-­century India afforded opportun-
ities to modify land and construct obedient manipulated landscapes to
reinforce the Mughal monarch’s Turko-­Mongol legitimacy (Subtelny,
1995: 20; Lentz, 1996: 39). Mobility itself was thus shrewdly used to create
static patterns of authority. For example, James I’s contemporary Jahangir
boasted in his memoirs how he came upon a stream flowing from the ferry
and ordered it to be diverted so that he could build a garden “such that in
beauty and sweetness there should not be in the inhabited world another
like it. I gave it the name of Jahān-āra [world-­adorning]” (Jahāngīr, Persian,
2006: 62–3; English, 1909–14: 106).
Such acts recalled similar past acts. Jahangir’s ancestor Timur had con-
structed a garden in Samarkand by appropriating the course of a river, so
that “highland and lowland, steppe and plain, were/Turned into …
Paradise”, and “Forage herbs became tulips, stones became/Rubies and
pearls, grass became elixir, and the/Ground became gold”, said Yazdi’s
Zafarnāma, in its hyperbolic recording of this transformation of terrain
 Famine chorography   77
(Persian, 1957; English, 1989: 91). The construction of Jahān-āra took
place during Jahangir’s tour of Kabul, re-­enacting his great-­grandfather
Babur’s survey of the gardens of Herat in 1506, and recalling the latter’s
attempts to then tame the “harsh and unwelcoming” (karāhat wa
nākhoshluk) north Indian landscape, with its heat, wind, and dust, into the
classic bāghs or gardens of Transoxiana. This “imperialism of landscape
architecture” (Balabablilar, 2012: 81; Dale, 2012: 186) controlling “free”
spaces continued throughout subsequent reigns of Mughal emperors.
Imperial travel itself became an act of memory and memorialisation, both
emulative and competitive. The garden in Kabul Shahr-­āra (“city-­
adorning”, and alluding to the name of its creator Shahr Banu,5 “lady of
the city/land”) was bettered by Jahangir’s Jahān-āra (“world-­adorning”).
The new name of the modified, compliant landscape synchronised, unsur-
prisingly, with the emperor’s own name, Jahān-gīr (world-­seizer). Notwith-
standing the erasure of local topography, land ownership, and possibly the
practical needs of the ferry connecting to the stream which was diverted;
by his son Shahjahan’s reign, the tradition of creating obedient landscapes
by manipulating courses of rivers and canals had stimulated the develop-
ment of satellite settlements of craftsmen and labourers employed for the
upkeep of gardens. As in the English context, the counter-­pressures upon
imperial definitions of place, I would argue, came from the mobility of
trade and labour that was created partly in response to Mughal manipula-
tions of landscape.
Their spatial and technical management of gardens and small scale
public water systems were imbued with political and economic meanings
(Wescoat, 2007; Eaton, 1993; Habib, 1999: 24–36; cf. Wittfogel, 1958;
Welch, 1996). Mughal emperors were in turn emulated by the Indian
nobility. The consequent proliferation of gardens meant such places could
only grow by interaction with activities outside their walls of enclosure.
Waterworks linked gardens with cities and countryside (Wescoat, 2011a).
The word “bāgh” (garden) could apply equally to the independent “chār-
bāghs”, and to groves, orchards, or mixed gardens growing fruit and
flowers. By the seventeenth century, even independent courtly gardens
performed economic functions, being, as Habib notes, “not simply sources
of aesthetic pleasure”, but sites for horticultural experiments based on
imports, transplanting, and grafting to augment fruit supplies (1996: 128).
Flower gardens stimulated distillation experiments, initially in aristocratic
households, leading to improved production techniques, expanded
cultivation, and economical pricing. Surplus production created commer-
cial objectives, and gardens began to be annually rented to market the
produce. By the latter half of the century, smaller privately owned gardens
were being bought and sold. Gardens sold off by heirs were ploughed and
turned into fields or wastes. Gardens were thus also sites of investment,
where expenses had to be recovered. Habib tables calculations found in a
contemporary manuscript (c.1642) of the labour, cattle, and implements
78   Ayesha Mukherjee
used in four gardens in and near Agra. The largest of these, Bagh Dahra,
covered 429 bighas and employed 236 gardeners, 162 oxen, and 46 rope
and bucket chains (ibid.: 133). Apart from their function as aestheticised
symbols of power, and sites of imperial recreation and deliberation, the
continued existence of these transformed spaces depended on their ability
to adapt to pragmatic concerns and incorporate networks of exchange
and labour, operating beyond their defined spatial remit.

Famine chorography
While EIC factors like Mundy encountered pressures of defining place
from both the available English political model and from political and
administrative structures of the Mughal empire, they were also aware of
fundamental challenges to traditional, seemingly stable, conceptions
of place. In both contexts, vagrancy and/or migration for subsistence or
improvement, the operations of markets and trades, and travel within and
beyond national boundaries created “abstract spaces” of “networks”,
shaped by processes of mobility and exchange (Lefèbvre, 1991: 2). Mughal
transformations of spaces and Taylor’s local travels are illustrations of
these processes and challenges, which took specific forms in India and
Britain, but were comparable and potentially interactive, especially when
we consider their effect on verbal and visual demonstration of space in
contexts of famine and dearth. In a text like Mundy’s Travels, this repres-
entation itself occurred in a state of mobility – he wrote journal notes and
made sketches of scenes on the move (Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson
A315). As a result, the text was informed by direct, immediate, fluctuating
experiences of dearth and plenty, later revised and organised. This led to
the construction of a “famine chorography”: a dynamic kind of spatial
representation categorising places as a locus of plenty or want, and appear-
ing as a mode in genres of writing that depicted mobility – a journal,
journey poem, or vagrancy literature. Places of fluctuating plenty or want
were identified along or near routes with an established political or eco-
nomic significance, pre-­defined by traditional, national, or imperial con-
ceptions of space, which the famine chorography of literature representing
mobility from below might question or challenge.
I use the term “chorography” in the Renaissance sense of written
description of regions, often combined with visual elements, including
maps, and considered distinct from chronicle history in its prioritising of
place above time (Schwyzer, 2009; McRae, 2009, 2015; Klein, 2001).
Mundy’s description of travel through famine-­affected areas contained ele-
ments common to British domestic travel writing, which utilised and modi-
fied chorographic traditions. In seventeenth-­century Britain, as McRae
notes, the empirical exercise of gathering data for the benefit of gentle-
men and the commonwealth was applied in domestic travel, which was a
cheap alternative or supplement to foreign tours, making England an
 Famine chorography   79
equal object of scientific enquiry (2009: 7–18). Spatial knowledge acquired
through travel became a means of manipulating space. Consequently,
domestic travel writing used the mode of cornucopoeia, a figure of plenty,
applying it to natural resources, information, and objects of curiosity.
Travel allowed access to abundant findings, turning the itinerary form into
a crucial tool – specifics of date, place, coordinates, geographical features
needed codified presentation (McRae, 2009: especially 67–90). Categoris-
ing places as pleasant/unpleasant, I suggest, became part of the itinerary:
the distinction was often determined by economic factors, like poverty and
poor sanitation described by the eighteenth-­century traveller Celia Fiennes
(1682–1712; Fiennes, 1984), or concerns with local hazards, hospitality,
and commerce in the poetry of Richard Corbett (1582–1635), Richard
James (1592–1638), or John Taylor (1580–1654). While Corbett, uncom-
fortable with the propensity of alehouses and inns to contest the status
quo of every fish and human being knowing their place, complained that
ostlers could rise to be innkeepers, tapsters could bully priests into paying
higher prices for bread and beer (1807: 161–84); in James’ journey poem,
an old fisherman offered more subtle criticism of travelling “gentlemen”
whose mobility, a product of affordable leisure, contrasted radically with
the localised labour of communities which ensured food availability.
James’ fisherman thus itemised his labour which rationed time: “making,
mending nett,/Preparing hooks and baits, wherewith to gett/Cod,
whiting, place…. Where with to feede ye markett and our selvs” ( James,
1845: ll. 126–36).
The issues Taylor raised were closer to the circumstances of Peter
Mundy’s travels in India. Locating labour in the persona of a penniless
pilgrim, Taylor focussed on finding food and categorising places as repre-
sentative of want or plenty as he “travailed on foot” from London to Edin-
burgh, reversing his Water Poet’s norm (“My legs I made my oars, and
rowed by land”) and encountering “strange (yet English) fashions” (1618:
1). In the itinerary mode, he ticked off provisions and practical hazards:
hunger, disease, and their remedies. He filled his “knapsack, (to pay hun-
ger’s fees)” with “good bacon, biscuit, neat’s-tongue, cheese/With roses,
barberries, of each conserves,/And mithridate, that vigorous health pre-
serves” (2), making a conscious choice, as his title page claimed, to under-
take this journey “not carrying any Money to or fro, neither Begging,
Borrowing, or Asking Meate, drinke or Lodging”. He conducted a
regional survey of the survival of hospitality in an economic context that
had placed under strain values of stewardship and communality. The pen-
niless “pilgrim” survived on the hospitality of ale houses, and the lack
thereof was, as Taylor called it, “drought” (6). In a comic, inverted famine
chorography, the drought was allied to parts of the route. Alternating,
unpredictable dearth and plenty not only defined spaces and places but
propelled Taylor’s narrative forward. Intermittently, the landscape yielded
free food for the penniless pilgrim and his starving horse:
80   Ayesha Mukherjee
My nag made shift to mump green pulse and peas.
Thus we our hungry stomachs did supply,
And drank the water of a brook hard by.
(6)

At other times, he breakfasted on “material Sunshine” in the absence of

an actual meal (14), observing that the “wit” to utilise the materials of
nature was quickly stimulated by “want”:6

Wit’s whetstone, Want, there made us quickly learn,

With knives to cut down rushes, and green fern,
Of which we made a field-­bed in the field,
Which sleep, and rest, and much content did yield.
(Ibid.)

Unlike nature’s provisions, not all hospitality encountered by the pilgrim

was free, let alone unproblematic. At Daventry, he found a strange hunger
for his travel tales at the inn, not unconditional hospitality. To the locals,
the traveller was a curiosity, identified with exotic imports – “some
monster sent from the Mogul”, “some elephant from Africa”, or “some
strange beast from the Amazonian Queen” (8–9). With comic exaggera-
tion, Taylor’s similes emphasised that the very condition of travel and con-
tinuous displacement made even the domestic traveller “foreign”.
Taylor’s deft ironic modulation of plenty and dearth connects his work
with earlier authors such as Thomas Nashe and Robert Greene, who
observed similar ambivalences during the 1590s dearth and famine in
England (Hutson, 1987: 199; Mukherjee, A., 2015: 55–9). But in Taylor,
the previous decade’s discourse of dearth appears to merge with a spatial
and travel-­oriented discourse. While discussions of food, traffic, or trade
featured in domestic travel writing partly for pragmatic reasons – travellers
needed to find provisions – travel also brought to light food substitutes
and strategies for survival used across the country, and beyond. Travellers’
specialised knowledge of survival on the move, with perpetually limited
resources, was re-­adapted to fit local or domestic contexts of dearth and
famine. Hugh Platt’s widely circulated Remedies against Famine, for
example, published food experiments based on his interactions with
sailors and soldiers, who were familiar peripatetic types in early modern
Britain. His experiments demonstrated the development of a local
economy of crisis foods through interaction with consumption practices
originating beyond local or national boundaries (Platt, 1607; Mukherjee,
A., 2015: 40). This kind of dynamic exchange made it harder to keep a
particular type of food in its particular place, geographically or morally;
while the heightened awareness of trade and traffic pushed against the
impetus to contain markets within models of space committed to values of
place and settlement.
 Famine chorography   81
Representing the Gujarat famine
A sailor from the age of 14, and the son of a Cornish pilchard merchant,
Mundy belonged to itinerant communities motivated by the need to find
innovative ways of stretching limited resources,7 possessing a literary, prag-
matic, and political discourse of their own, that adapted modes and
debates in domestic travel writing. When these modes of writing were dis-
placed, so to speak, and entered accounts of travel in India, complex ten-
sions and new mixed modes were created. We see this, for example, in
Mundy’s attempts to use figures of plenty, repeatedly frustrated by the
sheer scale of Indian famines. The Gujarat and Deccan crisis he narrates
began with a drought in 1630, attacks on crops by mice and locusts in the
following year, and then excessive rain.8 Famine and water-­borne diseases
created high mortality: 3 million died in Gujarat in 1631, and a further
million in Ahmadnagar.9 People migrated towards less affected areas,
many died on the way, and dead bodies blocked the roads. Persian and
European sources provide a subverted cornucopoeia of grotesque con-
sumption patterns: cattle-­hide was eaten, dead men’s bones were ground
with flour, cannibalism was frequent, and people fed on corpses. Carts
belonging to banjaras transporting grain from more productive regions of
Malwa were intercepted, and supplies diverted to the royal army in
Burhanpur (Mundy, 1907–36, II: 56; Foster, 1630–33: 165). The pre-­
famine price of wheat was approximately 1 mahmudi per man; in Septem-
ber 1631 it had risen to 16 mahmudis (van Twist, 1937: 68; Foster, 1630–33:
165, 196). Imperial charitable practices of opening free kitchens and offer-
ing revenue remission had limited effect. Gujarat was one of the main pro-
duction centres for calico cloth, and trade was badly affected by the death
and migration of weavers (Mundy, 1907–36, II: 276; Foster, 1630–33: 180).
Official chronicle histories, such as the Pādshāh nāmas of Md. Amīn
Qazwīnī and ʿAbd Al-­H . amīd Lāhawrī, closely defined the spatial and tem-
poral range of the famine. Lāhawrī began with a comparison of the
present year (1631) and the previous.10

[sāl-i guz– ashtah dar mah.āl-i Bālāghāt khos.us.an nawāh.i-i Daulatābād bārān
nabārideh bud]

In the previous year, at places in Balaghat, specially in the vicinity of

Daulatabad, it had not rained.
(Lāhawrī, I: 362)
He continued,
82   Ayesha Mukherjee
[wa darin sāl agarche dar at.rāf-o aknāf niz kami krad amma az mulk-­i
Daccan wa Gujrāt bilkul munqat.e‘a gasht wa sukkān-i ān deyār az inqet.ā‘e
mawād-i akl wa fuqdān-i māyah-i qut be iz.t.erār uftādand]

This year, although rain was less in the surrounding region, in Gujrat
and Daccan, it did not rain at all and the inhabitants of that place
were under great distress due to paucity of edibles and dearth of
nourishment.
(Ibid.)

It is clear that Lāhawrī draws on his predecessor Qazwīnī’s account of the

regional impact:

[wa az qazz..ayāi āsmāni ke darin sāl ruy dād imsāk-i- bārān, waqu’e qah.t. wa
ghala dar kull-­i vilāyat-i Deccan wa mulk-­i khāndis wa Gujrāt ast. Sāl-i pish
dar aks–ar-­i mahāl-i bālāyi khus.us. nawāh.i-i Daulatābād imsāk-i bārān shud
ammā darin sāl ām gardeedah bah.addi raseed ke pirān-i kohan sāl muddat-­
ul‘umr mis–l-­i ān nadeedah wa nashuneedah and]
And among the misfortunes brought about by the destiny that year
[1631] was scarcity of rain and occurrence of famine and drought in
the entire region of Daccan, Khandesh, and Gujrat. In the previous
year, too, there was scarcity of rain, particularly in the vicinity of
Daulatabad, but this year, it was more common, and reached the
extent that has never been witnessed and heard of earlier by the elders
in all their lives.
(Qazwīnī, British Library, MS. Add. 20734: ff. 218r–219v)

It was formulaic in Mughal chronicles to use spatial and temporal preci-

sion, as well as exact details of weather and climate,11 to frame the more
lurid narration of how the famine was experienced. This is where subtle
variations between accounts tended to occur. Narrative style could shift to
emphasise local suffering, blurring lines between factual reportage and
emotive effect, as we see in Qazwīnī’s insistence on the unprecedented
and exceptional nature of the calamity, neither seen nor heard by elders
in all their lives. While Qazwīnī continued with a snatch of verse to under-
line the physical conditions of drought (f. 218v), Lāhawrī adopted a
different literary tactic.

[jāni be nāni mi dādand wa kas nami khareed wa sharifi be raghifi mi

farokhtand wa nami arzid]
 Famine chorography   83
Life was offered for bread, and no one was buying it; nobility was
being sold for one flat bread, but no one was valuing it [in exchange].
(Lāhawrī, I: 362)

The balanced syntax ironically conveyed how daily patterns of exchange

and reciprocity were disrupted by famine – the price of bread was life
itself, while the virtue of nobility had no value. As regular economic rela-
tionships were overturned, the charitable giver turned beggar and classic
dearth-­time consumption and adulteration practices confounded the
economy further: dog’s flesh was sold as goat’s flesh, and dead men’s
bones were ground with flour, as both chroniclers noted (Qazwīnī, f. 218v;
Lāhawrī, I: 362). Eventually, when cannibalism became the final resort,
closest kinship ties fell apart:

[gosht-­i farzand rā shirīn tar az mehr-­i ou midānistand]

The flesh of a son was considered sweeter than his love.

(Lāhawrī, I: 362)

There is nothing like the macabre brilliance of this line in Qazwīnī’s

description. Lāhawrī pushed the narrative of suffering, extreme want, and
socio-­economic dislocation to its climax, perhaps more adeptly than
others. Famine migration and deterioration of land formed the extreme
points in this story of decline from past plenty to total want in the present:

[wa darin velāyat ke be abādi mashhur wa maaruf bud as̱ar-­i ma‘amuri

namānd wa ein balāye shdeed wabāhaye guzashtah wa ghalāhaye rafteh ra ke
dar tawārikh-i sālifah be rasm-­i ta’ajjub nawishtah and dar naz.ar be‘itebar
gardānid wa dar moallifāt-i lāh.eqeh chun mas̱al-­i maz̤rub wa samr-­i maktub
marqum khwahad gasht]

No trace of population was left in this region which was known for its
habitation. After this great calamity, which will later be cited as the
ultimate example and will be noted as legendary, all accounts of
previous epidemics and famines of the past which have been narrated
with wonder, shall become insignificant.
(Lāhawrī, I: 363)

The official chronicle’s purpose was to represent the emperor as the

singular provider of famine remedy; thus Mughal chronicles rarely missed
84   Ayesha Mukherjee
a chance to lay claim to “the worst famine of all time”, which the emperor
could be seen to address.
Lāhawrī concluded his description of famine with a cornucopoeia of
charitable measures proceeding from the emperor, marking a return to
specificities of place. Shahjahan, we are told, with “treasure-­scattering
hand and ocean-­like heart [ /dast-­i ganj afshān wa dil-­e
darya]” (ibid.), instructed his officials at Burhanpur (the headquarters of
the imperial army fighting the Deccan wars), Ahmedabad (the centre of
power in Gujarat), and Surat (the main port in Gujarat) to set up langars,
or soup kitchens, in localities under their administration. As long as the
emperor remained in Burhanpur, Rs 5000 were distributed to the poor
every Monday, the day of the week when Shahjahan had ascended the
throne. Lāhawrī noted that in 20 Mondays, 1 lakh (100,000) rupees were
distributed in the vicinity of Burhanpur (363–4). It was thus ensured that
charity visibly flowed from the person of the emperor, reaching those who
were geographically close enough to the current centre of imperial

Figure 4.1 Peter Mundy’s route from Surat to Agra 1630–31, showing his categoris-
ing of places on a scale of plenty to famine.
Source: the colour map, which designates plenty in green and famine in red, may be found
on the Famine and Dearth project web database: http://famineanddearth.exeter.ac.uk/
index.html.
 Famine chorography   85
activity. This centre, as we have seen, shifted frequently, and famines
allowed the opportunity to demonstrate more starkly to his subjects that
the emperor was the only true source of sustenance. Highlighting the
spatial organisation of charity was therefore a concerted strategy in the
official chronicle’s account of famine. The Pādshāh nāmas made the point
that networks of charity beyond the imperial seat in Burhanpur were also
within Shahjahan’s control. Lāhawrī claimed that Rs 50,000 were distrib-
uted to relieve the poor in Ahmedabad; while tax remission amounting to
70 lakhs of rupees (apparently, one-­eleventh of the whole revenue) was
offered in other regions. Lāhawrī commented, if this was the extent of
remissions from the imperial exchequer, one could accordingly imagine
how great the reductions made by noblemen holding jāgirs and mansabs
may have been. The emperor gauged, in other words, the extent and
severity of famine-­related suffering and determined the extent and nature
of official support across the realm. The chronicle’s narration of local spe-
cificities in this regard was more nebulous.
Mundy’s itinerary shows how English travellers and traders negotiated
this environment, conflicted with ecological, socio-­economic, and political
disparities and anxieties. The itinerary format in British domestic travel
writing emphasised that the nation depended on the circulation of people,
commodities, and information across local communities, not just within
communities bound by designated spatial limits of a piece of land.
Mundy’s journal constructed his itinerary acutely aware of the dynamics of
local mobility in his new setting.12
He started from Surat on 11 November 1630 and his narrative, filled
with local topographical detail, merged the journal form with a famine
chorography different from the imperial Pādshāh nāmas. His landscape
description suggested a practiced sensitivity to local engagement with
shortage, complicated the contrast between the fertile Malwa region and
deprived localities below the Narbada river, and identified tensions
between localities. There was a concentration of food supplies in Viara,
“fortefied with a good Castle and accommodated with a very prettie pond
or Talao stored with fish and fowle”, and market towns such as Chopda,
Navi, and Bahadurpur (Mundy, 1907–36, II.40; f. 32r–v). Between Viara
and Chopda, Mundy itemised places badly affected by famine. Just 14
miles from Viara was a poor town, “halfe burnt upp and almost voyd of
Inhabitants, the most part fledd, the rest dead, lyeing in the Streets and
on the Tombes” (II.40–1; f. 32v). In Daita, people sold their children
(II.42; f. 32v). Mundy’s party had difficulty pitching their tent at Nandur-
bar because the town was congested with dead bodies. They bought food
at “unreasonable rates”, and were overwhelmed by the smell “from a great
pitt, wherein were throwne 30 or 40 persons, men, woemen, and children,
old and young confusedly tumbled in together without order or Cover-
inge” and the sight of “poore people scrapeinge on the dunghills for food
… in the very excrements of beasts belonging to Travellers, for graine that
86   Ayesha Mukherjee
perchaunce might come undigested from them”. People looked like
“anatomies, with life, but scarce strength enough to remove themselves
from under mens feet” (II.43–4; f. 33r–v). For Mundy, the dead and starv-
ing constituted part of the landscape from Surat onwards, lying along
highways and near towns, piled outside city gates where bodies were
dragged and left. His analogies and images highlighted the way control
over the landscape was frustrated by famine which challenged the fixity of
quantification and the regulation of boundaries demarcating spaces such
as markets, towns, cities, estates, roads, rivers. The land was intractable and
rhetorically marked out as an inversion of any constructed “Jahān-āra”.
The rhetoric itself demands attention, because when describing
unpleasant places, moral or aesthetic disgust was complicated by empathy
in Mundy’s language. His perception was shaped by the communal con-
ditions of travel. His kāfila (caravan) had started at Surat with 150 people,
15 carts and some camels. Joined daily by people escaping famine, it con-
sisted, by Nimgul, of 1800 people, 300 carts, and cattle (II.45; ff. 34v–35r).
The flow of people – the rhythm of movement is vital to Mundy’s repres-
entation of landscape – progressed towards Burhanpur, the prosperous
city centred on Shahjahan’s castle and estate. If Burhanpur was an ima-
gined locus of plenty, the market towns leading to it brought into view
palpable contradictions between the “plentifull Bazaar” and starved bodies
in streets, obstructing trade and travel. Burhanpur was a site of imported
and tentative plenty:

The Bazare … which joins to the Castle is very faire and spacious, and
now, by reason of the Kinges being here, plentifully stored with all
provisions, beinge supplied with all things from all parts, farr and
neere, which otherwise, it may bee believed, would feele the same
Calamitie with her Neighbour Townes, for theire is litle or nothinge
growes neere it for many miles.
(II.50–1; f. 35r–v)

Mundy’s narrative of his journey through the fertile Malwa region was
countervailed by the practice of looking back at this politics of dearth.
Despite green fields, villages stored with grain, and plentiful rivers, the
sinister flow of this plenty towards Burhanpur army camps haunted
Mundy’s description throughout. Just as Hugh Platt’s or John Taylor’s
local engagement with communities coping with contradictions of dearth
and travail allowed them to query famine remedies and definitions of
place imposed from above, Mundy’s chorography questioned royal estate-­
centred discourses which, as noted earlier, described charity flowing from
this centre, reinforcing the emperor’s benevolence, divinely constituted
political authority, and control over the environment, land, and resources.
Mundy felt removed from the resources consumed by imperial land-
marks he ambiguously admired and undermined. His own perspective
 Famine chorography   87
was the diffused migratory one of travellers and tradesmen, local and
foreign. He camped with the local trader Mirza, learning from his
resourcefulness and the local knowledge of banjāras, local carriers or
drovers, whose trade served and depended on mobility (Habib, 1999:
69–70, 1990: 371–99; cf. Kothiyal, 2016). Mundy’s famine chorography
was thus informed by the mixing en route of racial and social groups
with different agendas, making cooperative and competitive demands
on resources, a characteristic ambivalence in chorographic works in his
own national context. Mundy thus saw kāfilas as practical demonstrations
of local cooperation: the mixing of people, lengthening of the caravan,
and shaping of mutual dependence, as the kāfila wended its way through
the land, demonstrated to him survival strategies and knowledge of land
organised from below. Like Taylor, he located positive industry in travel
itself. More than a train of carts, the kāfila was a temporary mobile
household travelling across, and coping daily with, the shortage-­driven
landscape, exchanging information about the availability of resources
with seasoned local traders for whom mobility was also an endemic con-
dition. In Mughal Sarai, Mundy’s kāfila met a group of banjāras carrying
provisions:

It was at least 1½ miles in length, and as many more returning emptie

to bee reladen, and all the face of the earth, as farr and distant as wee
could descerne, covered with greene Corne. But of all this abound-
ance poore Guzeratt was never the neere, where there was most
neede, it being all to Brampore to supplie the kings Laskarrie (or
Armie) lyeing there against Decan.
(Mundy, 1907–36, II.55–6; f. 37r)

This crossing of routes and witnessing movements of provisions reinforced

anxieties surrounding the finitude of resources and local problems caused
by displacement.
Mundy explicitly made cross-­cultural connections between this group of
nomadic traders in north-­west India and English carriers (“Their course
of life is somewhat like Carriers, continually driveing from place to
place”), observing that mobility was their condition of life. They travelled,
as Mundy rightly noted, in a tanda (local term for a caravan of banjāras
and their cattle) and “carrie[d] all their howsehold along with them”. He
estimated the tanda consisted of 600–700 men, women, and children, and
14,000 oxen “all layden with graine, as wheat, rice, etts.; each Oxe, one
with another, carryeinge 4 great Maunds, each Maund neere 16 Gallons is
112,000 bushells London measure” (II.95–6; f. 45r–v). The groups trav-
elled slowly and “dispersedly”, journeying no more than 6 or 7 miles a day.
Mundy constantly converted local measures of volume or distance to
English measures familiar to him, and simultaneously tried to make sense
of the banjāras trading networks. He astutely commented on their
88   Ayesha Mukherjee
ownership of mobile capital, such as cattle, and the flexibility of their
exchange mechanisms.

They are sometimes hired by Merchants, but most commonly they are
the Merchants themselves, buyinge of graine where it is Cheape to be
had, and carryinge it to places where it is dearer, and from thence
again relade themselves with anythinge that will yield benefitt in other
places as Salt, Sugar, Butter, etts.
(Ibid.)

In other words, Mundy was aware that their trade was flexibly governed by
changing local space and demand, instead of being attached to static tra-
ditions of production and exchange. The banjāras’ position may have
seemed closer to EIC factors like Mundy, who served and depended on
the Company’s centrally authorised operations but, at the same time, had
to rely on mobility to meet their trading needs.

Placing famine: the “Deccan”

Mundy’s observations about the Deccan wars crucially uncovered eco-
nomic considerations determining movements of Mughal army camps,
whose equally endemic mobility compounded matters, for the army had
its own particular approach to space, provision, and travel, guided by local
ecology and imperial geopolitics. First, the army focused its movements
along the Arid Zone where alluvial agricultural areas intersected with dry
marchlands which often constituted a famine tract, where inhabitants
undertook survival strategies, such as cattle tending, weaving, peddling,
and temporary military employment. The empire relied heavily on sea-
sonal peasant labour supplies from arid areas for its growing military
labour market, and on the pastoral economy for supply of war horses and
dromedaries. Armies moved most efficiently when marching along the
frontier between settled agricultural societies providing food supplies and
the pastoral marchlands providing fodder and space (Gommans, 2002:
7–37; Kolff, 1990: 1–31). Second, as Stuart Gordon shows, a main force
army was like a “moving city”; typically comprising three horses for every
two riders, a groom and servant for each mounted warrior, often over 100
oxen to pull each piece of artillery, elephants for commanders, an infan-
try, a full bazaar to supply the army, and treasure for soldiers to buy provi-
sions in the bazaar. It could not move more than 10 miles a day, with two
stationary days per week (1993: 37–8). Smaller armies or sub-­units,
however, could move faster, as Lāhawrī’s account of army movements dis-
cussed below will show. Mughal armies with better organisation of canton-
ments, officer corps, supply lines, and core professional soldiers, moved
faster, coordinating a host of satellite missions related to the objectives of
the main force.
 Famine chorography   89
Third, imperial highways constructed along frontier zones utilised their
connecting capacity. The south-­eastern Dakshinapath followed extensions
of the Arid Zone to connect Madhyadesh through Malwa and the Deccan
plateau to the Carnatic coast of the Bay of Bengal (Gommans, 2002:
18–19; cf. Gole, 1989: 91–3). Since roads allowed control of “nuclear zones
of power”, areas combining agricultural surplus, marchland, and trade
routes, army routes frequently traversed spaces between the abundant and
arid, plenty and dearth. The intersection of Malwa, Khandesh, and Gujarat
along the Dakshinapath, just above the Deccan border, was such a space.
Heaviest “imperial traffic” occurred along the line from Kabul to
Burhanpur (Gommans, 2002: 103), the southern end of the route,
to which Mundy saw the supplies from Malwa being directed. Shahjahan’s
southern campaigns, through Rajasthan and Malwa, involved zigzagging
across the main highways in search of pasture rather than clearly following
the main route. As Jos Gommans notes, the royal camp “steadily ate its way
round the empire” (104). But this was achieved by relying on various criss-­
crossing networks of banjāras bringing food and fodder, merchants,
accountants, and bankers ensuring ready availability of money, and qasba-
tis providing military labour supplies (Kolff, 1990: 5–6). Arguably, the
empire’s nomadic character was more evident along its peripheries and,
during the Gujarat famine, along the unstable, ever-­shifting southern
border.
When Mundy alludes to the King’s army lying in Burhanpur against the
Deccan, he seems aware of the relational status of this geographical term –
what constituted the Deccan depended on where the southern border lay
at a point in time. The geopolitics of regions above the current border,
along his route from Surat to Burhanpur, was closely connected to that of
regions immediately below. Not only Gujarat, but northern Maharashtra
suffered acute famine at this time. The region the Mughal army sought to
conquer depended on regional trade between ecologically complementary
areas of the Konkan (fertile, rice-­growing) and the Desh (pulse-­growing)
separated by the mountainous Western Ghats, a retreat for rebels who
raided productive areas on either side (Gordon, 1993: 12–13; Lāhawrī I:
360). Produce was transported between the Konkan and Desh by bullock
caravans travelling over the Ghats. This region also participated in the
cotton trade centred on Surat and Burhanpur, and the coastal trade in the
west. On the whole, it was thinly populated, showed low monetisation
levels, and rain shadow areas below the Ghats faced a regular cycle of
depopulation and recolonisation (Gordon, 1993: 22–3). In 1630–32, the
Mahadurga famine, as it was locally known, devastated countryside of
northern Maharashtra, along the contemporary Deccan border, with three
successive failed monsoons and large-­scale depopulation – a crisis com-
pounded by Mughal political ambitions. Following the deaths of the
Ahmadnagar rulers, Malik Amber in 1626, and Bijapur’s Adil Shah in
1627, the Mughals focused on the vulnerable Ahmadnagar state as a point
90   Ayesha Mukherjee
of entry to secure the south. This aim governed the army’s activities
described in the Pādshāh nāma throughout the latter years of the 1620s,
culminating in Shahjahan’s 1630 campaign to gain control of the north-
ern Deccan.
If approached from a spatial perspective, Lāhawrī’s account, from the
start of Shahjahan’s reign in February 1628, of complex movements of the
imperial army in the Deccan, emerges as a meticulous chorographic exer-
cise, describing precise geographical movements of sections of the impe-
rial army in 1628–31 over a particular frontier zone (Lāhawrī, I: 316–433).
Lāhawrī’s famine chorography thus begins much before the description of
the famine itself. The army’s movements were closely concentrated in the
regions of Gujarat, Malwa, Khandesh, Baglana, Berar, and Daulatabad,
corresponding to modern Gujarat, Punjab, and Maharashtra. Armies
descended from Agra or Burhanpur towards the Deccan to quell frequent
rebellion or gain control of territories belonging to Nizam-­ul Mulk
(Burhan Nizam Shah III), the current leader of the Nizam Shahi dynasty
which ruled the Ahmadnagar Sultanate. The Pādshāh nāmas record the
management of mobility in these regions as the complex conflicts and alli-
ances which shaped the Deccan wars were conducted. Simultaneous
military expeditions, from 1628, were led by Abul Hasan, Abdulla Khan,
Mahabat Khan, and Azam Khan, generals entrusted with the task of con-
trolling rebellious princes like Jajhar Singh, treacherous courtiers like
Khan Jahan Lodi, or decaying sultanates like Nizam-­ul Mulk’s. In 1629–31,
these expeditions involved continuous movement and presence of the
army, especially along areas south of the Narbada and Tapti rivers. In
1628, soon after Shahjahan ascended the throne, Abul Hasan set out from
Agra in pursuit of Khan Jahan Lodi, chasing him down to Dholpur and
across the Chambal river, but Lodi appears to have escaped into the
Bundela forests, taking advantage of the army’s difficulties with following
him through this terrain, making his way through Gondwana and Berar,
aiming for Ahmadnagar. Next year, Hasan was sent from Agra again to
conquer Nasik, Trimbak, and Sangamnir. He stopped at Burhanpur, and
made his way to Dhuliya (half-­way between Burhanpur and Nasik) where
he waited till the monsoon rains had passed. He was joined by Sher Khan
with reinforcements from Gujarat, whom he despatched to attack the
Batora fort in Chandor, close to Nasik and Trimbak. Sher Khan returned
with the proceeds of this attack, and Abul Hasan moved from his resting
point at Alang Fort (near Dhuliya) and passed through Baglana going
towards Nasik and Trimbak. On this route, his forces found deserted
villages near Jarahi ghāt, whose inhabitants had fled to the hills. He sent
his men to seek out their settlements and to the still inhabited villages,
which were plundered to obtain resources to support the army. When the
Nizam’s forces intervened, Shahnawaz Khan travelled 20 kosh (approxi-
mately 45 miles) to make a counterattack. Meanwhile, Khan-­zaman was
sent to attack the enemy camp at Sangamnir.
 Famine chorography   91
While Abul Hasan’s forces focussed on these conquests, Azam Khan’s
army fought the rebel Afghans, moving on from Dewalgaon (60 miles
south of Burhanpur) where they had rested during the rains, in pursuit of
the rebels Mukarrab Khan and Khan Jahan Lodi to Pipalnir, Bir, and
Siugaon, where they were joined by Bhonsla, defecting Hindu commander
of the Nizam’s army. Lāhawrī notes, the scarcity of provisions in Daulata-
bad, owing to the presence of rebel armies, prevented Azam Khan from
proceeding there. Instead, the imperial army planned a strategic attack on
Dharur fort. Azam Khan proceeded from Siugaon to Damangaon
(20 kosh/45 miles from Ahmadnagar) to Jamkhair (in the Nizam’s
territory, 30 miles south-­east of Aurangabad) and left a force there. He
then went further south-­east to the banks of the Manjira river
(12 kosh/24–5 miles from Dharur fort) and backed up to Partur on river
Dudhna, thus closing in on Dharur, and camped 3 kosh/7–8 miles from
the fort. By 1630, the imperial army had made significant inroads into the
Nizam’s territory. Azam Khan attacked Dharur and seized its ammunition;
while Abdulla Khan and Muzaffar Khan, traversing a complicated route
from Malwa, crossed the Narbada river, pursued the rebels under Khan
Jahan Lodi who were plundering Ujjain, and eventually chased them to
Sironj, passing through Dharampur, Lonihara, Depaulpur, Nulahi, and
Khilichpur. As Lodi fled from Sironj towards Kalpi, the army caught up
with him in the village of Nimi, at Bhander (north-­east of Jhansi). He was
eventually caught and killed in Seundah, north of the Kalinjar fort, where
another commander of the army was stationed (Lāhawrī, I: 316–62).
The Pādshāh nāma’s narration was about progressive mastery over
spaces and provisions. As the imperial army increased its reach into
Deccan regions, its pursuit and punishment of rebel leaders, and its
capture of key military bases, were carefully coordinated. This coordin-
ation utilised and created access to local knowledge of the regions, increas-
ing imperial visibility and power. Climate was presented as an impediment
to this process – monsoon rains forced armies to halt for long periods of
time, or drought altered the spatial dynamics of habitation, impeding
access to local provisions. Depictions of landscapes, from a military per-
spective, were guided by the gaining of vantage points and self-­
provisioning through local raids and sieges. Lāhawrī described the siege of
Parenda, 60 miles south-­west of Dharur, near the Sina river, on Azam
Khan’s route from Ahmadnagar to Sholapur (360). He sent his ally Jai
Singh to first plunder the town – typically, the target was the market
located 1 kosh (2 miles) from the fort. As Singh raided the market, Khan
arrived and placed a month-­long siege on the town. But, says Lāhawrī,
there was no provender or grass within 20 kosh, so Khan was obliged to
raise the siege and continue to Dharur. He managed to fend off the Adil
Khani supporters of the Nizam and camped on the banks of the Manjira.
The next day, he captured and plundered the town and fort of Balni,
before marching to Dharur. Just as the imperial army relied on local raids
92   Ayesha Mukherjee
for provisions, so did rebel armies. Lāhawrī noted, with an air of distaste,
that Khan Jahan Lodi and his men had begun collecting revenues from
the dependencies of Bir, and raiding merchants’ provisions in the towns
of Kehun and Kiorai, when they heard rumours of the impending arrival
of the imperial army. Regions covered by constant movements of armies
were thus not only affected by drought; better provisioned markets and
towns in these localities were also the site of competitive raiding by impe-
rial and rebel armies.
It is therefore unsurprising that, when Mundy returned to Surat in
1633, out of the 21 Company men living at the time of his departure, 4
were alive. Gujarat itself had “scarce 1 left of 10” (Mundy, 1907–36,
II.275–6). No factories remained, and Mundy gloomily estimated the
region would not recover for the next 20 years. Seventeenth-­century
English travel journals such as Mundy’s offer an alternate perspective to
Mughal courtly discourses of space, mobility, and resource management,
drawing upon chorographic debates and representational modes in
their own national context. Attending to similar narrative processes,
among the Company’s papers and correspondence, can highlight the
anxiety among Company men that plenty was temporary, deceptive, and
ill-­distributed. These texts created tension with relatively static construc-
tions of food availability, ecological control, and place in official dis-
courses, and began the process of constructing mobility itself as a
repository of positive values of enterprise, cooperation, and exchange.
In this regard, they were part of a rapidly emerging discourse of global
networks of knowledge and trade operating across cultural zones or
national boundaries; but they also viewed spaces beyond Britain through
the lens of domestic mobility, which had its own persistent, indigenous
insecurities. If we are to recover an early modern “global” under-
standing of food security in its own terms, this chapter suggests looking
more closely at overlapping modes of representing place and processes
of mobility in a famine context, not only extrapolating facts about places
from such accounts and related sources.

Notes
1 On the “seventeenth-­century crisis” and global climatic events in the longue
durée, see especially Parker (2013), Grove (2002), Grove and Chappell (2000).
A critical examination of these ideas, with further evidence, is undertaken by
Damodaran, Allan, and Hamilton in Chapter 3 of this book.
2 Later figures like Edward Barlow, analysed by Fumerton in her account of
“unsettled subjectivities”, were drawing on decades of seafaring experience,
traditions of mobility, and identity formation in travel accounts.
3 There are differently nuanced arguments about this: Westerfield (1915, 1968)
for types of petty traders; McKendrick et al. (1982: 86–8) on the development
of a consumer society; Spufford (1984: 5–20) on the increasing circulation of
consumer goods; McRae from the viewpoint of domestic travel (2009: 102).
Woodbridge (2004: 151) argues pedlars were suppressed because they
 Famine chorography   93
threatened commercial interests of (traditional) fairs, weekly markets, guilds,
and pawn shops.
4 Qazāq/qazāqliq had a specific usage in post-­Mongol central Eurasia where it
described a state of political vagabondage (Lee, 2015: 23–5; Dale, 2004: 98–9;
Subtelny, 2007: 29). Fatrat had the more focused meaning of an interregnum,
highlighting the anxiety of being in a state of eternally seeking political
stability.
5 Daughter of Mirza Abu Said, great-­grandson of Timur and Babur’s paternal
grandfather.
6 The idea that wit proceeds from want was a common motif in 1590s literature
of dearth (e.g. Weever, 1599: I.21, II.4).
7 On the decline of the Cornish pilchard trade which probably led Mundy to
seek employment with the EIC, see Carew (1602: 52–3); Pritchard (2011).
8 Accounts of the famine in Gujarat and the Deccan in the 1630s are found in
the following sources, from which the details here have been drawn: Qazwīnī,
MS. Add. 20734: 218r–219v, Or. 173: 220v–221r; Khān, Or. 174: 29r–32r, Or.
1671: 17r–18v; Lāhawrī, I: 362–3; Foster, 1630–33: 73, 134–96, 203–68; 1634–36:
40; Mundy, 1907–36, II: 38–70, 276; Van Twist, 1937: 63–77. For a wider chron-
ology of Mughal Indian famines, see Habib, 1999: 112–22.
9 Reported by the Portuguese Viceroy at Goa in 1631 (Foster, 1630–33: xxi).
Lāhawrī reported that Gujarat suffered most (I: 363).
10 Translations from Persian by Azarmi Dukht Safavi (with my occasional amend-
ments); transcription and transliteration by Md. Ehteshamuddin, in Famine and
Dearth, http://famineanddearth.exeter.ac.uk/index.html.
11 Sadiq Khan, however, reported excessive rain spoiling crops in 1630, drought
in 1631, and attack on crops by mice and locusts in 1632 (OIOC, Or. 174:
29r–32r, Or. 1671: 17r–18v). Habib, 1999 (115, n. 19) suggests this reflects the
different ways the famine was experienced in different regions – thus Khan is
possibly focussing here on the Deccan experience where excessive rain was the
initial cause.
12 Textual references to Temple and Anstey edition (1914, 1936) and Bod.,
Rawlinson MS. A315.
5 Rivers, inundations, and grain
scarcity in early colonial Bengal
Ujjayan Bhattacharya

River water movements and price inflation closely resemble each other in
their impacts on the agricultural economy. A moderate inflation is argu-
ably beneficial to the economy just as a continuous and moderate flow of
water enhances productive possibilities. But immoderate increase in prices
have a corrosive effect on the economy, just as excessive flow of water
wreaks destruction and havoc on the crops. Such similarities in the nature
of the two phenomena prompt us to investigate further how rivers and
inundation might directly affect prices and the economy in times of dearth
and famine. Floods, droughts, or other physical disruptions of normal life
bring about price rise in the core regions affected by such events, and
have a ripple effect on wider regions. This can produce famine-­like situ-
ations, if not an actual famine. In 1787 and 1788, many districts of Bengal
experienced excessive, repeated, and violent flow of water on the crops,
caused, as Damodaran, Hamilton, and Allan demonstrated, by a series of
severe storms. This immediately increased the price of grain in the market.
Flood waters, by reducing the scope of producing food for the future, con-
tinued to impact on the price rise till 1790, when restrictions on the move-
ment of food were removed. While it has been claimed that inundations
are generally beneficial for an agricultural economy, excessive and destruc-
tive water currents reduce the scope of producing food and preserving
food-­stock, and lead to economic degeneration. This chapter shifts our
focus to take a closer look at the socio-­economic impact of exogenous cli-
matic shocks, such as that delivered by the Madras Typhoon of 1787. The
periodicity of rains and frequency of inundation were responsible for high
prices in core affected regions as much as human manipulations of food-­
stock, and prices were liable to be affected even in the region beyond the
core. In this context, one should distinguish between annual inundations
that are the regular and characteristic (“normal”) feature of floods in
deltaic Bengal, and the exceptional flooding that had severe destructive
effects on food production. I aim to show, through this detailed case study
of the effects of a specific disaster, how severe climatic events could disrupt
local ecologies and affect the micropolitics of exchange and relief in local
economies. The high price of grain, total destruction of habitations, and
 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   95
change in the courses of rivers, severally or singularly, could change the
nature of local economies and thus have long-­term effect on a region.
Such eventualities could be accompanied by famine and depopulation.
David Clingingsmith and Jeffrey Williamson have shown that India
experienced a historically low rate of drought during the period
1650–1735. Till 1640, the average rate of drought was one drought every
three years. The rate fell precipitously to the average of one drought every
six years after 1650, and remained at that level till 1725. It then fell to an
even lower level, i.e. one drought every ten years from 1735 to 1775, when
it rose again (Clingingsmith and Williamson, 2005). However, nine
instances of drought between 1767 and 1793 have been recorded by Rajat
Datta. Barring the drought of 1769–70, which caused a great famine in
many districts of Bengal, the other droughts of high intensity, causing
“famine panic” and “public scarcity” occurred in 1779 and 1783 (Datta,
2000: 243). Floods, during the eighteenth century, in the absence of pre-
vention measures, did cause heavy destruction and had the potential to
cause famine. They could be the cause behind scarcity, dearth, and near-­
famine whenever river inundation was accompanied by excessive rainfall
(ten instances between 1737 and 1787) (ibid.: 240, 243). The only major
exception perhaps was the drought of 1769–70 in Bengal, when the misery
was caused, as Damodaran argues, primarily by unprecedented level of
revenue collection (Damodaran, 2007).

The climatic event

As introduced in Chapter 3, the major climatic event which brought about
a near-­famine situation in 1787–88 in east and north Bengal were the
typhoon and storms leading to flooding of the rivers of that region.
Though in terms of the intensity of impact, floods in Bengal rivers at other
times were as turbulent and destructive – such as the flooding of the river
Damodar in 1773 – the climatic disruption of 1787–88 was marked by its
prolonged effects. It caused devastation in the rural economy as it
impeded the process of regeneration of cultivation, and encroached on
the resources that were saved for the future. Such aggravations prompted
people to flee their habitations in search of food. Further problems were
caused by the rise of water to great levels (Proceedings of the Board of
Revenue (Miscellaneous) (BRP (M)) 25: 28 September 1787, from Nadia
to Board of Revenue), and this was identified in the Board of Revenue
Proceedings as the primary cause behind loss of habitation especially
where the flow of water was turbulent (BRP (M) 25: 21 September 1787,
Tipperah). Geographically, the floods were widespread. The climatic dis-
turbances which were responsible for heavy rainfall and swelling of the
river continued throughout the year – from March till November. The
floods spread over the provinces of Dinajpur, Rangpur, Mymensingh,
Tipperah, Sylhet, Jessore, Nadia, Burdwan, Birbhum, and Midnapur.
96   Ujjayan Bhattacharya
There were, however, some variations in the movement of flood waters.
The greater intensity of impact on habitation and food-­availability in north
and east Bengal was due to the fact that rivers in these regions were
beyond the deltaic zone, originating from mountains and hills, and came
down with great turbulence and force. This was uncharacteristic of the
rivers of the Gangetic delta.
The combination of environmental change and economic events that
generated the impact on human lives involved the duration of flood and
breach of the cycle of agricultural activity in the rural economy. The
greater the duration and repetition of inundation, the greater the possib-
ility of famine. The destruction of the crop sown in one season could be
compensated by abundant growth of another, by taking advantage of the
alluvium added to the soil (Mukherjee, 1938: 160–79). Similarly, dif-
ficulties with the payment of revenue by ryots (peasant cultivators) after
one season of flood could be obviated if collection was made in the sub-
sequent season. However, if inundations were prolonged, and aggravated
by the cascading effect of repeated floods, there was no possibility of
growing much crop to compensate for previous losses or pay up the
arrears of revenue. Moreover, the labour necessary for constructing
embankments could be diverted elsewhere for agricultural work – within
the same locale or outside – rendering the prevention of further inunda-
tion difficult (Proceedings of the Provincial Council of Revenue (PCR) at
Murshidabad 1: 3 January 1774, Lashkarpur to PCR). These instances illus-
trate that the rhythm of nature tended to break into “ecological disaster
points” (Datta, 2000: 238), particularly when flood waters acted with the
physical force that could cause destruction, and it was not merely an
excess flow. What could follow was an “ecological dislocation” (ibid.) with
impact not only on the existing availability of food and possibility of
cultivation but also on the future prospect of growing crops in the suc-
ceeding season. The peasants faced starvation, and lost their dwellings and
their wherewithal for renewal of agriculture.
The floods of the year 1787 were unprecedented in contemporary
memory. The oldest inhabitants of the district of Mymensingh and Tippe-
rah remembered nothing like it (BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787, from
Mymensingh; 26: 9 October 1787, from Mymensingh; 21: 31 July 1787,
from Resident Tipperah to Chittagong); in Sylhet, though people shud-
dered at the thought of the distresses of 1784, the water levels in the year
1787 were “considerably higher than they were ever at any period that
year and the damage infinitely greater” (BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787, from
Sylhet). In Nadia, the flood was two feet higher than in 1785, and it was
reported that the oldest inhabitant had no recollection of such a deluge
(BRP (M) 25: 28 September 1787, from Nadia). Most of these districts had
abundantly fertile lands, so it could be expected that enough stores of
grain – from the aus (spring) harvest of the previous year or the boro
(intermediate) harvest of the spring season – would provide relief, directly
 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   97
or through the market, in the season of floods in July and August. But that
was not to be, as the rains had begun in March and the stores of grain or
golas located in the ganjes (localities) had been destroyed.1 The immediate
effect of it was the rise in prices of grain.2 The landowners and overseers
(zamindars, chaudhuries, and talukdars) of the zillah (district) of
Mymensingh informed that rice in parts of the country were selling at 16
or 17 seers per rupee (BRP (M) 21: July 1787, from Mymensingh); and the
collector of Mymensingh reported that grain of a very coarse kind was
available at 20 seers per rupee (BRP (M) 21, 31 July 1787, from
Mymensingh). About the situation in Tipperah, the Resident wrote that
“the price of grain rose and still continues to rise” (BRP (M) 21: 31 July
1787, from Resident Tipperah to Chittagong). The next casualty was the
aus crop, and almost every collector wrote that the crops were destroyed
leading to the suspension of kists (installment payments of monthly
revenue). The only exception was the district of Nadia from where the col-
lector reported that the aus crop had been saved, despite the deluge, and
he would be able to fulfill the revenue obligations of the district (BRP (M)
25: 28 September 1787, from Nadia). Jessore too was saved from much
damage despite the rise of rivers due to timely repair of embankments
(BRP (M) 24: 4 September 1787, from Jessore). Finally, possibly the most
important cause behind the famine was the impact of inundation on the
kharif (autumn) harvest which affected aman (winter crop), or the largest
harvest in Bengal. From the accounts of the district officers and their
superiors in Calcutta, we know that in most districts the ryots and zamindars
sought the installments of revenue to be postponed till the aman har-
vested, hoping that it would mature. Their hopes were belied by con-
tinuous rainfall, flooding of the rivers, and other climatic anomalies.

Prolonged effects
In 1787, the possibility of famine was increased by repeated inundations
and climatic distresses. Hopes of revival were raised by moderation of
weather at certain intervals, but extreme forms of climatic disturbances
leading to inundations brought about further misery for the cultivators. In
July 1787, it was reported from Sylhet that by “the great fall of rain …
since the month of March last” all the “low parganas [sub-­districts] were
entirely overflown, the inhabitants driven from their houses and obliged
to take shelter on boats” and the greatest part of the cattle drowned. The
villages had lost not only the rising crops (that is boro) but also the seed
“which is the greater loss”. The price of rice was greatly enhanced as a
result of “many Gholas [grain stores] having been swept away” (BRP (M)
20: 31 July 1787, from Sylhet). The damage was sought to be salvaged by
cultivating in higher lands which had not experienced inundation till
then. But “the circumstance instead of being an alleviation has proved the
source of greater misfortunes”, said the reports. During “the interval of
98   Ujjayan Bhattacharya
fair weather which never exceeded a week many more were induced to
attempt to sow their lands”. Some of the ryots did so three times and
“instead of reaping the fruits thereof have had the misfortune to find that
they have not only lost their rising crops but also the seed which is greater
loss” (ibid.). Zamindars were called to raise another crop but their hopes
“vanished” – the Collector reported – as “after three repeated attempts
the crops have been drowned by succeeding inundation and the season is
gone” (BRP (M) 25: 21 September 1787, from Sylhet).
As a consequence, the ryots did not have resources to engage for the
next year’s revenues. At Dinajpur, in the early stages of the floods, “the
rubby [i.e. rabi, winter-­sown] crop was entirely destroyed” and the ryots
refused to come to any settlement unless heavy remissions were granted or
the demand for revenue was altogether postponed and “thrown upon the
kurieff [kharif] and assasheen [ashwin, autumn] crops” (BRP (M) 24, 7 Sep-
tember 1787, from Dinajpur). Soon after this communication, the inunda-
tion was reported as calamitous, “water having risen at different periods
and the crop transplanted in the interval when the water apparently was
subsiding”. Due to the subsequent sudden rise of the river waters, crops
“decayed in the ground”. The local officials apprehended that the effect
on the kharif harvest would be ruinous, and particularly “upon the damage
done to the Ruby crop”, as the zamindars depended on it. The loss of
cattle was another result of prolonged and repeated flooding. This not
only prevented the possibility of cultivation but also did “materially retard
the bringing to the market the crop which may be reaped, as without
cattle the grain cannot be cleaned” (ibid; BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787, from
Dinajpur). Thus, the initial vulnerability caused by the extended rains was
evident when the rabi crop was destroyed and the ryots could not engage
for the new year’s revenue in May and June with the zamindars or the gov-
ernment’s collectors. This was further aggravated by the continuing rain
and river flooding till the month of August. On the instruction of the
Board of Revenue to report on the effects of inundation and state of
floods in eighteen parganas, on 14 August 1787, the Collector reported
that the parganas where the ryots were in economic distress were laid waste
by rain and river water, and the principal casualty were the rabi crops
which had been sown in October of the previous year. These crops con-
sisted of the boro rice and spring crops consisting of peas, pulses, oilseeds,
and miscellaneous greens (Hunter, 1869: xii).3
Detailed reflection on the nature of calamity caused by rains and river
water suggests that, apart from the long drawn-­out impact on the food pro-
ducing fields, which broke the cycle or the rhythm of agricultural economy,
it was the violence of river waters breaching through the mountainous passes
and falling on the plains which had caused enormous destruction to the
process of cultivation. At Mymensingh, the zamindars and ryots had signed
the revenue settlements “in the month of Jeet [Jyesth; May–June]” hoping
that they would be able to pay the rents regularly. Unfortunately, from the
 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   99
beginning of Assar (June–July) the waters rose to an extraordinary height
and destroyed all possibility of undertaking cultivation. The rains continued
for fifteen days at a stretch, and the floods drowned lands in eight parganas
causing scarcity of food and bringing agriculture to a halt (“Petition of the
Zemindars of the parganas Sreesory, Surriel, Jamshy and Lutluffpore to
Mymensingh”, BRP (M) 20: 31 July 1787).

Geographical impact
The floods and extreme weather conditions affected the grain prices
within a wider ambit, including places beyond the inundated regions.
Except in Chittagong, in the month of October, 1787, every district
recorded lesser availability of rice in the rice harvesting months of 1787,
compared to 1786. Table 5.1 shows the variation in grain prices between
October 1786 and December 1787 in six districts of Bengal.
Rice prices in December 1787 at Dinajpur, a district within the core
region affected by floods, were better than at Rangpur, the adjacent dis-
trict most affected by the floods. At Rangpur, the prices were 18 seer/rupee
in the countryside, and 23–5 seer/rupee in Rangpur town.
Transportation through the flooded rivers could not have been easy,
but there is no evidence to suggest this was hindered by the floods to cause
scarcity in different districts of Bengal. Yet, scarcity in the core famine
region had a cascading effect, as authorities laid embargo on the exporta-
tion of grain through river channels and prevented the transfer of grain

Table 5.1 Comparative prices of paddy and four sorts of rice in six districts of
Bengal in 1786 and 1787

Districts Months Rice prices in seer/rupee Paddy prices in seer/rupee

1786 1787 1786 1787

Midnapore October 30.25 22.12 – –

November 35.62 27.37 – –
December 36.64 28.26 – –
Chittagong October 39.56 43.76 40 76.25
November 56.42 46.82 113.37 94.56
December 68.06 51.31 110 95
Boglepore October 47.29 33.14 – –
November 44.42 33.81 – –
December 43.59 32.62 – –
Purnea October 61.87 47.54 122.58 86.55
November 77.81 53.46 141.62 89
December 82.81 45.68 169.37 58.06
Houghly October 39.24 34.54 65 50
November 40.59 29.71 65 57
Dinajpur December 36.31 28.87 – –

Source: WBSA, BRP, 25 January 1788.

100   Ujjayan Bhattacharya
Table 5.2 Per rupee food prices at Dinajpur in 1786 and 1787

Wheat Wheat Boot Buree Cally Boot doll Moog Musoory Motor
1st sort 2nd sort moog doll doll doll

1786 1 md, 12 sr, 1 md, 1 md, 1 md 1 md 27 sr, 28 sr 1 md, 1 md,

8 cht 32 sr, 8 cht 5 sr 8 cht 5 sr 15 sr
1787 35 sr 1 md, 25 sr 23 sr 23 sr 24 sr 17 sr 29 sr 1 md,
5 sr 15 sr

Source: WBSA, BRP, 25 January, 1788.

Key
md = maund ; sr = seer ; cht = chhatak.
1 md = 40 sr; 1 sr = 16 cht.
In modern measures, 1 maund = 37.32 kilograms; 1 seer = 0.93 kilograms; 1 chhatak = 58 grams.

from one region to another. In fact, evidence suggests there was not much
grain to be transferred, as what was in store, from the previous harvests,
was held back to provide relief. Thus, floods and the consequent scarcity
in northern Bengal affected grain trade all over the country, and the zone
of scarcity was extended to central and eastern Bengal, thereby giving the
impression of near-­famine in the wider province of Bengal. The floods in
eastern Bengal were no less grim, and the possibility of depending on
their own supplies was as remote as in the northern districts (“A trans-
lation of the Arzee of Seid Aly Cawn enclosed in the letter from His High-
ness the Nawab Mobarick ud Dowlah to Mr. Pott Collector Government
Customs at Murshidabad”, BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787; and, 31 July 1787,
from Chittagong reporting about Comilla; BRP (M) 25: 28 September
1787, from Rangpur). While Rangpur, and the adjoining district Dinajpur,
were epicentres of famine conditions, regions beyond it like Murshidabad,
Dhaka, and Rajshahi were also affected. The Murshidabad district, an agri-
cultural region feeding its own people, was also a major grain trading
centre of eighteenth-­century Bengal, where grain merchants resided. The
district was linked to the grain-­producing areas of northern and eastern
Bengal through water channels, and was dependent on those regions for
supply. It was apprehended that there would be a grain scarcity in Mur-
shidabad because the price of rice was raised considerably and the grain
merchants “continue daily increasing it” (BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787, and
“enclosures from the Collector of Government Customs at Moorsheda-
bad”). This happened in consequence of information received of grain
scarcity “in the districts of Rungpore, Dinagepore, Dacca and Rajeshahy”.
The authorities feared that the “dreadful consequences” of a real scarcity
caused due to natural factors would be increased if the grain merchants of
Murshidabad, by trick and artifice, exported grain out of Murshidabad to
more profitable destinations like Calcutta. The collector thus proposed an
embargo out of Murshidabad (BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787; “Private letter
from Mr. McDowal of Rungpore to Mr. Pott Collector Government
 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   101
Customs at Moorshedbad”, 6 July 1787; BRP (M) 26: 12 October 1787,
from Collector Govt. Customs).
The grain merchants in turn told the authorities that “from a great
length of time” they had constantly purchased at “Dubba in the district of
Rungpore, grain and other articles of merchandise” which was “kept in
store there”. In the rainy season, according to their annual custom, they
brought grain and foods to Murshidabad. This year, the collector of that
district prevented them from transporting the grain and told them to sell
it at Rangpur instead of Murshidabad (“Translation of a petition from the
11 dealers in grain to the Collector Government Customs at
Moorshedabad”, BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787). The collector reported that
the people of Rangpur had been “threatened with a famine” and it was
necessary to lay an embargo on rice exportation out of the district. The
merchants were asked to send stored grain to Rangpur and sell it at one
maund per rupee, which they refused. At Dhaka, a situation similar to
Murshidabad prevailed. Consignments of grain were expected from
Bhagalpur, Rangpur, and Dinajpur, and the grain dealers were asked to
receive those at river junctions like Sooty and Jellingy. Because of the lack
of availability, grain became exceedingly dear in Dhaka and its neighbour-
hoods, and it was not possible to supply grain to areas of insufficiency,
which was a customary practice in times of dearth (“A translation of the
Arzee of Seid Aly Cawn”, BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1787).

The famine
By September 1787, there was widespread scarcity of grain and famine pre-
vailed all over the inundation affected areas. Even if there was hope that
some amount of crop could be grown “when the violence of weather”
abated, it was frustrated by an acute scarcity of cattle and fodder. On 13
September 1787, the first piece of local level information received sug-
gested that Rangpur was visited by a full blown famine (BRP 25 (M): 28
September 1787, from Collector of Rangpur, dated 13 September 1787).
The Collector of Rangpur not only reported a scarcity but also wrote to his
superiors that people were in need of relief or state charity, and could not
live without it. This was the point at which scarcity turned into famine, for
administrative purposes (Hunter, 1869: 7). The Collector could not
provide relief locally, and requested the assistance of the government for
provision of food. He reported that grain was selling for 23–5 seers per
rupee at Rangpur, and 18 seer per rupee in the countryside.4 In the early
stages of the scarcity, the Collector was hopeful that those “unhappy crea-
tures who by repeated inundations have been expelled from their places
of abode have resorted to this station and they have been relieved from all
the miseries of Famine, to which they otherwise have fallen a certain sacri-
fice”. But soon after, the numbers of these hapless people increased so
much that within a few days
102   Ujjayan Bhattacharya
3–4000 of them assembled at this place and they still continue to flock
from all quarters many of them not having tasted food for eight or ten
days, and dying in the streets before the necessary relief can be afforded.

People were driven to the town of Govindganj in mid-­September 1787,

when the season for cultivation was over. They had to be supplied with
food for two or three months until the new rice could be brought to the
market. In the Collector’s estimation, the per capita requirement per day
being one-­third of a seer, a supply of 2124 maunds of coarse rice was
required to afford subsistence to 5000 people for 75 days (BRP (M) 25: 28
September 1787, from Collector of Rangpur, dated 13 September 1787).
The Collector wanted to know whether it was possible to purchase rice
from neighbouring districts, and the authorities in Calcutta responded he
could do so only if he could make the disbursements on the spot in order
to avoid “risk, delay and disappointment” (BRP (M) 25: 28 September
1787, from BR to Governor-­General in Council). The famine continued
till the kharif season. On 20 November 1787, which in normal times would
have been the season of harvest and plenty, there were in Rangpur town
“upwards of six thousand people who are daily supplied with Rice”. In that
month, following another tragic climatic disruption – a storm, no less than
forty “of these poor wretches” died. A meagre kharif harvest, promoted
with “great pains” by the Collector himself, was “now just getting into the
ear” but was likely to be “injured” by depopulation and the effects of the
storm (BRP (M) 28: 20 November 1787, from Rangpur).
In the lower parganas of the Sylhet district, “the principal and only
crop” of the season (aus) was destroyed, leading to depopulation of the
area. The Collector went to inspect the parganas located on relatively
higher plains. He reported that even in those areas

there is scarce a village but has suffered some loss either in cattle or
desertion of the riots who have retired to the hills for safety; the few
surviving cattle are subsisted by the roots of grass drawn up by
bamboos; nothing but ocular demonstration can form an idea of the
unhappy state.

The human cost was now beyond description, it seems. The Collector,
however, assured that he would continue to provide relief, but did not
request assistance from the central authority (BRP (M) 25: 21 September
1787, from Sylhet).

Government response
The effect of the floods of 1787 on government decisions was visible not so
much in the effort to organize distribution of food, which was severely in
want even many months after the beginning of inundations, but rather in
 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   103
seeking to redeem a situation in which normal revenue collection was not
possible. Remissions were demanded and allowed, but in many instances the
revenue collectors were impeded, if not completely obstructed, by the phys-
ical dislocation of normal life in villages (BRP (M) 24: 7 September 1787,
from Dinajpur). Possibly due to the fear of food riots taking place in the
countryside, the officers asked for sepoys from Calcutta (BRP (M) 21: 31 July
1787, from Dinajpur). In the threshold years of the permanent settlement,
government revenue policies were premised on “uniform rate of taxation”
and “obtaining accurate knowledge” before an assessment could be made.
Faced with a terrible crisis as that of 1787–88, when a deduction amounting
to two-­thirds of the estimated assessment was demanded by the zamindars,
the knee-­jerk reaction of the central government was to declare the lands
khas [fallow], or bringing the lands under direct government supervision by
appointing sezawals [government officers] and suspending the authority of
the zamindars (Orders from BR to Rungpore, communicated to Governor-­
General in Council, BRP 24: 11 September 1787; Governor-­General in
Council’s instructions to Board of Revenue on Rungpore and Purneah, BRP
(M) 25: 25 September 1787). In the absence of accurate knowledge,
perhaps, the government felt obliged “to suspend the demands for the rents
where Inundation renders it necessary” (BRP (M) 26: 2 October 1787, from
Governor-­General in Council to BR); but this always carried the proviso that
the “indulgence” was not to be abused by the zamindars and other categories
of revenue payers.
There was hardly any system of providing relief to the displaced popula-
tion. As Hunter noted about eighty years later, people knew that the Decem-
ber rice harvest (aman) was the great crop of the year, but few adequately
appreciated the impossibility of making up for its loss by the produce of the
preceding September harvest (aus), or of the green crops (rabi) in the fol-
lowing spring, or by the early rice crop (Hunter, 1869: 1). Thus, in a situ-
ation, as in 1787–88, when both aus and aman had been destroyed, the
stored grains of previous year had been inundated, and the seeds for next
year’s boro crop had been destroyed, the matter was even graver. The famine-
­point, defined by Hunter as the point at which government relief operations
became necessary, was reached in 1787 when the Rangpur Collector
appealed for state charity. However, given the distance and isolation of the
north and east Bengal districts, it was not possible to arrange relief from Cal-
cutta, the central administrative location. Reliance had to be placed on the
availability of food in neighbouring areas which were not affected by floods,
and the ability of the Collector to co-­ordinate (BRP (M) 25: 28 September
1787, from BR to Governor-­General in Council).

Climate, famine, and riot

The extraordinary year of 1787 saw the climatic aberrations continue till
the end of the year. Storms and rains struck even those places which were
104   Ujjayan Bhattacharya
not affected by the floods at the beginning of the year. These districts were
beyond the central deltaic zone of Bengal, towards the west of the prov-
ince. The incidents caused further damage to crops and raised the prices.
The rivers in the western part of the province, and also in north Bengal,
are of a different nature. These rivers descend from hills and small moun-
tains located in the west and flow towards plains in the east. In October
1787, “vast torrents that rushed down from the westward” overflowed the
bank of the river near Midnapur town, carrying down cattle, men, women,
and children. The remarkable feature of this deluge was its rapidity,
noticeable in other instances of flooding in western Bengal. The “violent
storms of rain and wind” destroyed the stores of grain and straw and the
necessary implements for agriculture, causing acute scarcity of food in
twelve parganas and Midnapur town (BRP (M) 26: 9 October 1787, from
Midnapur, dated 3 October; BRP (M) 28.2: 13 November 1787, from Mid-
napur). Parganas in Bissenpur (Bishnupur) were also struck by a similar
torrent destroying crops and cattle, resulting in scarcity of grain and sus-
pension of revenue collection (BRP (M) 26: 12 October 1787, from
Birbhum, dated 6 October; BRP (M) 28.2: 9 November 1787, from
Birbhum). More importantly, the grain district of southern Bengal, thir-
teen parganas of the district of Burdwan, suffered heavy and violent floods
of the rivers Damodar, Ajay, and five other rivers of the plains. The flood-
ing of Damodar was particularly destructive as it breached the embank-
ments and flooded Burdwan town (BRP (M) 26: 12 October 1787, from
Burdwan, dated 9 October). The events of the month of October rounded
off the calamities that began early in the year of 1787 and prolonged the
food crisis.
The impact of the floods on the economy, and its subsequent impact
on revenue, brought to the fore tensions embedded in society, even after
a year had lapsed. In the Carjeehaut zamindari division of Rangpur district,
the area most affected by flood, there was depopulation and serious
damage to the crop. The administration’s attempt to collect more than
half of the jama [assessed amount of collection] from Soobaumgunje
pargana, which had remained in arrears due to the floods, in the month of
April (the onset of summer months) through a new settlement, was vio-
lently resisted by the ryots. The administration was not able to collect even
half of the arrears, and zamindars who attempted to do so were attacked,
and their karamcharis [employees] at the Cutcherry of Soobaumgunje
insulted and held hostage (BRP (M) 36: 9 May 1788, from Rangpur, dated
2 May).
In this resistance, the role of the head ryot or the bumiah became prom-
inent. Seven or eight head ryots who had influence over the mass of ryots
gathered a large body of them at Soobaumgunje. They were not satisfied
with the deductions that had been granted to them. Their targets were
zamindars and their men, who collected revenues according to a settle-
ment they made with the government. The zamindars of Carjeehaut, being
 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   105
vulnerable, reported the matter to the Collector, who in turn resorted to
severe measures to put down the “rebellion”.
The government’s response to the incident brings out the fractures
within a society under the impact of a natural calamity. While the resist-
ance was led by the head-­ryots or bumiahs in the mofussil [rural division],
targeting the zamindars, the government at the sadar [town] insisted on an
increase in the jama or assessment in 1788 to compensate for the losses of
the previous year, though the collector admitted the district had suffered
severely by inundations and famine. Here, the government faced resist-
ance from those zamindars whose estates had suffered heavy damages. The
reason was, after conducting the collections with “utmost moderation” as
stated by the collector, the government used the opportunity to assess the
productive capacity of the estates afresh by declaring the lands khas.
Carjeehaut, which paid for 90 per cent of the revenue of this region held
by four zamindars, refused to engage for revenue (BRP (M) 57.2: 30
December 1788, from Rangpur). Their refusal did not spare them from
the attacks and hostilities of the ryots and bumiahs on whom the burden of
taxation fell, and who had borne the consequences of the environmental
disaster.
The conflict between government and zamindars, on whom “every justi-
fiable coercion” was applied, was again witnessed when they refused to
erect flood-­preventing dams on the instruction of the government. The
government responded harshly by selling off the lands of those who
refused to engage in such work (BRP (M) 36: 6 May 1788, from Rangpur
to BR, and BR to Rangpur). The crisis was thus compounded, as ties of
kinship, obligations of stewardship, and structures of hierarchical author-
ity were simultaneously strained to a breaking point.

Food markets
The food, particularly grain, crisis, occasioned by the floods of 1787, had
serious impact on the markets in 1788. Throughout that year, the grain
crisis continued unabated, and even in December 1788, the government
considered it unadvisable to lift the embargo due to uncertainties about
what could be “produced for export” after procuring for internal con-
sumption. In January, the price of grain had “risen to a scandalous
degree” in Murshidabad. The machinations of the grain merchants led to
exorbitant prices, complicating already straitened circumstances caused by
flooding. Rice was selling at a high price of 23 or 24 seers to a Sicca Rupee
(BRP (M) 30.2: 18–29 January 1788). The Collector of Customs reported
that suspension of duty on grain trade “has only been an additional profit
to the merchants, and no relief as was intended to the poor”. The Board
of Revenue, the coordinating agency, in advising the government on strat-
egies to be adopted on the apprehension of a scarcity before the “crops of
the next season” may be expected to ripen, said, “there exists at this
106   Ujjayan Bhattacharya
moment a scarcity of grain in most of the interior districts of Bengal, par-
ticularly in those that have suffered most from the inundation and storm”.
They feared this scarcity would probably increase

as the great crop of the current year is now in the market without
having removed the evil, and as the first crop of the ensuing season
being the smallest of the two will not be in the market before August.
(BRP (M) 30.2: Cons. 25 January 1788, from BR to
Governor-­General in Council)

The Calcutta grain markets, which had the advantage of procuring

grain from areas in the Gangetic plain, where floods were not so disas-
trous, did not register a favourable trend in terms of 1787 prices compared
to the previous year, as shown in Table 5.3.
However, by the end of 1788, eastern districts seemed to have recovered
from the severe effects of the inundation. Officers of the Dhaka district
wrote to their authorities that they were happy to inform, “from the
favourable prospects the crops now have”, there was every reason to hope
the inhabitants would meet with relief from resources of the district, and
that orders may be issued to officers at Patna to stop any further dispatches
of grain for the relief of Dhaka (BRP (M) 57.1: 4 December 1788, from
Messrs Day and Bebb, dated 17 November). The government at Calcutta
began to take stock of the general state of the crops in the interiors of the
district and began to think of exploring the possibility of exports (BRP
(M) 56: 2 December 1788, from BR to Governor-­General in Council).

Table 5.3 Bazar prices of grain for three years in the markets of Calcutta

Medium 1785 Medium 1786 Medium 1787

Seer Chatak Seer Chatak Seer Chatak

Wheat 23 5 32 13 34 9
Table Patna Rice 17 9 20 14 21 10
Table Country Rice 25 13 30 – 27 10
Middling 30 8 35 – 30 9
Coarse 33 13 40 – 34 9
Chatta Balam 36 12 41 – 36 8
Donny Balam 41 14 50 – 45 2
Chatta Lottee 47 4 55 6 48 –
Donny Lottee 52 12 60 6 52 13
Piarry 37 10 50 – 43 2
Moongy 31 10 39 8 36 –
Buddy 15!s baty – 18  baty – 7 baty –
Calley Gram 30 – 37 – 37 4
Boot Gram 23 10 39 2 44 –

Source: BRP, 30.2: 25 January 1788.

 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   107
However, the government, cautiously, did not call off the embargo till
1790. The effects on market operations and responses of the authorities
illustrate that the still nascent regulatory and relief mechanisms were put
under considerable pressure by the network of climatic, ecological, eco-
nomic, and social causes of the 1787 crisis of food.

Rivers and famine

Historical debates about floods in Bengal, and their effects on the
economy, have contended with a paradox. Floods are supposed to be both
a blessing and a curse, and geographical comparisons between the flood-
ing of the Nile valley and the inundations in Bengal have led environmen-
talists to assert this more forcefully. As Beinart and Hughes show, monsoon
and associated floods could be considered as crucial to Bengal’s agri-
culture as the annual flooding of the Nile is to Egypt (2007: 140). Thus,
floods on an appropriate scale are traditionally supposed to bring prosper-
ity to agriculture due to the deposition of silt on alluvial soil. Radhakamal
Mukherjee (1938: 160–79), James Rennell (1793), and Henry Thomas
Colebrook (1794) shared this view, making distinctions between deltaic
Bengal and those regions which were to the north and west of it. The dis-
tinctions entailed further differences in the nature of inundations by the
rivers of the two geographical zones. Rennell and Colebrook had written
about annual inundation on the plains, which assumed a sort of regularity
in its timing.5 But the monsoon and the rise in water level in major rivers
and their tributaries could vary from one year to another, and the rivers’
potential to cause damage was expressed in the frequently apocalyptic
rhetoric of local officials managing the crises.
Almost a year after the calamities of 1787, the Collector of Rangpur
wrote about the “sudden and violent breaking in of Teestah during the
latter rains” and stated that:

In many parts of the district the River has in a most extraordinary

manner has forced its way through the cultivated grounds to a very
considerable distance from its channel and from thence has over-
flowed the whole of the adjacent country … the destructive effect of
which I was an eye witness to.
(BRP (M) 36: 6 May 1788, from Rangpur)

Accounts of Mymensingh floods relate that the overflowing of the banks of

the river caused dreadful inundation, carving out dramatic alterations of
terrain. In mid-­June of 1787 “a pass in the Golessive Mountains was forced
by the waters which rushed in with such violence as to sweep down whole
villages and carry away inhabitants, cattle, grain and everything” (Repres-
entation of the zamindar of Sreesory pargana, Mymensingh, BRP (M) 21:
31 July 1787). In other neighbouring parganas:
108   Ujjayan Bhattacharya
From the beginning of assar the waters from the Rogonandan and
Roshanabad Mountains forced themselves a passage and rushed with
such velocity as to breakdown the Banks of Magha and River Kavie
which at once overflowed the whole pergunnah and totally destroyed
the crop that were coming on.
(Representation of the zamindar of Surriel, Mymensingh,
BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1788)

We never saw or heard of such constant and severe rains and storms as
we have had since the beginning of assar, this greatly hurt the country –
the passes Rogonundun and Noorah Mountains breaking at the same
time rushed with such velocity as to overflow the banks of Burrumpoter,
Kaird, Burack etc. rivers and made an inundation into these Mehauls at
once in such a manner as to carry away whole villages.
(Representation of the zamindar of Jamshy and Lutluffpore,
BRP (M) 21: 31 July 1788)

This picture is in contrast to that depicted by Rennell and Colebrook

about the Gangetic delta. In the delta, even extensive floods could have
regenerative potential, and did not disrupt the entire cycle of cultivation.
They were not the unprecedented apocalyptic deluge described in
accounts of the 1787 famine.
The climatic and economic crisis of 1787 thus offers a clearer per-
spective on how local ecological conditions and economic patterns could
interact to create a famine. The effects of an ecological dislocation caused
by nature, within a core region of cultivation in eastern and northern
Bengal, could thus ripple across a large part of the province because of
the destruction of grain crop, consequent scarcity, and high grain prices.
This, in turn, shaped official responses and policies, leading to the devel-
opment of an official stance on when a threat of scarcity might be termed
a famine, and when and in what form state relief or charity might be
offered. Unlike the better-­known famine of 1769–70, this crisis was more
explicitly influenced by climate events which had, as this chapter demon-
strates, a significant impact on local communities, ecologies, and official
administration.

Notes
1 Reports from Sylhet (July 1787) indicated that Azmerygunj and many golas were
swept away. Reports from Tipperah (July 1787) noted that at Sujahgunje, the
market with all its produce was carried away; while Jerwargunje in Comilla could
not be reached. In Mymensingh (July 1787), there was a representation from
the zamindar of Sussong pargana, stating that water rushed with violence to
“sweep down whole villages and carry away inhabitants, cattle, grain”.
2 Measures of weight used were: 1 maund (md) = 40 seer (sr); 1 sr = 16 chhatak
(cht). In metric measures, 1 md = 37.32 kg; 1 sr = 0.93 kg; 1 cht = 58 g.
 Rivers, inundations, and grain scarcity   109
3 The spring crop of Bengal, or rabi crop, would also have included the boro seed
sown in October and reaped in March.
4 According to calculations by W. W. Hunter in 1866, the famine warning price
was 2 rupees, 10 anas per maund. The prices in 1787 at Rangpur were very close.
See Hunter, 1869: 9.
5 As Rennell explained, in his Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan or the Mogul Empire
(1793: 270):
The rice I speak of is of a particular kind; for the growth of its stalk keeps
pace with the increase of the flood at ordinary times, but is destroyed by too
sudden a rise of the water. The harvest is often reaped in boats. There is
also a kind of grass which overtops the flood in the fame manner, and at a
small distance has the appearance of a field of the richest verdure.
Part III
Politics of climate
and relief
6 Chaotic interruptions in
the economy
Droughts, hurricanes and
monsoons in Harriet Martineau’s
Illustrations of Political Economy
Lesa Scholl

Harriet Martineau’s career as one of the nineteenth century’s most pro-

lific public intellectuals spanned almost 60 years. As a journalist, political
commentator, travel writer, novelist, reviewer and historian, her literary
impact was unsurpassed; yet it was her economic series Illustrations of Polit-
ical Economy (1832–34) that made her a household name and gave her
national and international access to politicians and other people of influ-
ence from a range of political persuasions. Influenced by the early polit-
ical economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and
James Smith, Martineau intervened in this male dominated field at a
crucial moment in economic thought, when statistical analysis and
mathematical modelling were beginning to gain precedence. Martineau’s
tales deliberately resisted the idealism of such models, and refused to
ignore the complications of political economy as practised in human
society. As her series progressed, both Whig and Tory Members of Parlia-
ment sent her Blue Books, asking her to focus on particular aspects of
policy, while internationally her work was translated into French,
German, Dutch, Spanish and Russian, with the intention of disseminating
the series through school systems. However, when she initially sought a
publisher for the series in 1832, the fraught social condition of Britain –
the initial rejection of the Reform Bill in 1831 led to riots throughout
most major cities and towns, while London was under threat from cholera
– caused publishers to hesitate, including key London publishers from
Baldwin and Craddock, Whittaker, Treacher and Arnot, and the Fox
brothers, the latter eventually taking on the project, although it was Mar-
tineau herself who had to gain subscriptions. Martineau’s determination
to see the project through arose from her conviction in the importance
of the work, as well as the public demand for it. She told William Fox,
“the people want this book, and they shall have it” (Martineau 2007, first
published 1877: 144).
By making political economy accessible to a popular readership,
Martineau enabled readers to critique the established economic and polit-
ical systems. In this chapter, I argue that she encouraged critique through
114   Lesa Scholl
her portrayal of uncontrollable variables that disrupt economic theory:
that is, the effect of environmental disasters on food security. In this way,
she complicates the idealism of supply and demand and the invisible hand
of early political economy, anticipating post-­Malthusian paradigms of food
access, such as Amartya Sen’s understanding of the individual’s or com-
munity’s relationship to a commodity, legitimacy and structures of owner-
ship: “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough
food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough to eat”
(Sen 1981: 1). In Martineau’s illustrations, supply and demand do not
reconcile because of structures of social and economic privilege that are
revealed, often through environmental devastation. The juxtaposition of
political concerns with a waterborne disease in the publishers’ hesitancy is
particularly telling, for Martineau contends not just with the potential dis-
ruption of visceral human responses to inequality and want, which could
arguably be controlled or moderated, but with climatic interventions over
which humans have no control. In his introduction to Principles of Political
Economy (1836, first published 1820), Thomas Malthus observes that the
“desire to simplify” in political economy “has occasioned an unwillingness
to acknowledge the operation of more causes than one in the production
of particular effects” (5); yet even in Malthus’s own work, there is a fasci-
nating absence of climatic events in discussions of supply and demand.
Famine is related simply to increased population, rather than facing
uncontrollable, sudden natural disturbances. Further, when Malthus
speaks of the “study of natural laws”, rather than considering the environ-
ment, the uncontrollable factors he discusses are political, such as the
inability of one nation-­state to control the prosperity of an adjacent nation-
­state (10). In his earlier Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) Malthus
references earthquakes and volcanos briefly, but refuses to accept the
immediate devastating effect that such events can have on a region.
Indeed, he suggests that these kinds of events are essentially rare, trivial
and ineffectual:

The most tremendous convulsions of nature, such as volcanic erup-

tions and earthquakes, if they do not happen so frequently as to drive
away the inhabitants, or to destroy their spirit of industry, have but a
trifling effect on the average population of any state.
(42–3)

One of the flaws of political economy that Martineau’s work reveals is

the myth of continual progress, which does not sufficiently account for
environmental disasters. Political economists clung to Malthus’s famous
claim of population increasing geometrically and subsistence arith-
metically (1836: 7), and the “season of distress” he references (11) is
based purely on excessive population growth, not, for instance, on the
destruction of crops by storms. At no point does Malthus seriously try to
 Chaotic interruptions in the economy   115
contend with environmental disasters. In this way, Malthus falls into line
with other economists, for whom the environment is inconveniently
uncontrollable: it disturbs the order of their theory. When there is an
excessive focus on statistically based economics, it is easier to focus on
what can be controlled through human intervention. Indeed, Malthus
attempts to place emphasis on the consistency of the laws of nature;
however, as much as economic theory can be imposed on policy, it has no
jurisdiction over environmental disasters.
While Martineau was influenced by key economists like Smith, Ricardo
and Mill alongside Malthus, in contemporary reviews she was most often
criticised for being Malthusian in her approach. In her Autobiography she
defends the “pure, benevolent, and scientific spirit of Malthus” (2007:
164) and goes on to defend both his moral and mathematical methods:

All that I know is that a more simple-­minded, virtuous man, full of

domestic affections, than Mr. Malthus, could not be found in all
England; and that the desire of his heart and the aim of his work were
the domestic virtue and happiness should be placed within the reach of
all, as Nature intended them to be…. Such is the moral aspect of
Malthus’s work. As to its mathematical basis, there is no one … who
could question it that might not as well dispute the multiplication table.
(169–70)

However, as much as Martineau professes this line, and as much as she was
both celebrated and vilified as a proponent of political economy,1 her
counter-­narratives of climatic extremes exacerbating hunger and despera-
tion overturn classical economic theory. In The Physiology of Common Life
(1859), George Henry Lewes would go on to describe hunger as “the very
fire of life, underlying all impulses to labour, and moving man to noble
activities by its imperious demands…. But when its progress is unchecked,
it becomes a devouring flame, destroying all that is noble in man” (1–2).
This observation, almost three decades after Martineau’s series, resonates
with Malthus’s depiction of the French Revolution “which, like a blazing
comet, seems destined either to inspire with fresh life and vigour, or to
scorch up and destroy the sinking inhabitants of the earth”, and
humanity’s “perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after
every effort remain still at an immeasurable distance from the wished-­for
goal” (1836: 1). In both Lewes and Malthus hunger is seasonal, but it is
still perpetual: the people are always hungry. Hunger is the catalyst for
momentum, with physical hunger feeding the social hunger for inequal-
ities and injustices to be addressed. What Martineau’s tales reveal, though,
is the chaotic nature of such hungers in dialogue with each other at
moments of environmental crisis. As she works to show what economic
theory would look like in practice, the characters who espouse political
economy’s ideals become increasingly problematic, marginalised and
116   Lesa Scholl
silenced in the face of environmental disasters that have an immediate
and sudden impact on the local economy.
While people have enough, they have little impetus for change; but
when one is hungry, there arises an acute awareness of lack, and a desire
to be satisfied. Historically, uprisings and revolutions can almost always
be tied to seasons of dearth and starvation, and a recognition that some
people are affected more than others by the lack. This visceral response
is exacerbated when supply is suddenly taken away through environ-
mental interventions. At the same time, though, extreme longstanding
hunger can lead to debilitating hopelessness; and it is in this kind of
state of inaction that climatic events necessarily move people to act. I
will examine three of Martineau’s tales in which extreme weather func-
tions to compel communities to react against economic strictures. Sowers
Not Reapers (2004, first published 1833) opens with an alienated local
community succumbing to drought during England’s 1830 Swing Riots.2
French Wines and Politics (1833b), set in France during the 1788 lead-­up
to the French Revolution, is haunted by the hurricane that devastated
crops and caused the famous price rises in bread in October of that
year, which were considered instrumental in the immediate inspiration
of the revolution.3 Martineau, while commenting on France, also
emphasises Britain’s economic investment in the French Revolution,
refusing to allow her British readership to distance themselves from the
unrest. The third tale, Cinnamon and Pearls (1833a), is set in Ceylon
under the regime of the East India Company; and alongside the implica-
tions of imperialism and colonisation on the lives of the Cingalese, the
figure of the monsoon season operates to destabilise the economic and
cultural expectations of the community. Problems of scarcity and starva-
tion are exacerbated in each of these texts, while access to particular
foods – as well as food in general – becomes crucial to characters’ per-
ception of their social and political agency. The weather events operate
both literally to disrupt economic supply – crops are destroyed in each
of the tales – but they are also metaphorical representations of the
hunger of the people, and catalytically work to overturn political econo-
my’s myths of stability and order. The political merges with the environ-
mental, creating a dialogue akin to that between physical and social
hunger.

The debilitation of drought

The effect of the Corn Laws4 on food security in Sowers Not Reapers is com-
plicated by the natural elements through the prolonged and difficult to
frame event of a drought. Unlike hurricanes, or even the monsoon season,
which I will discuss in relation to the other two texts, it is difficult to deter-
mine the beginning and end of a drought. Whereas a storm generally has
a clear definition as a weather cell, and distant lightning can warn of its
 Chaotic interruptions in the economy   117
onset, the blurred edges of drought make it challenging for such an event
to motivate people to act: once the drought is recognised, the people are
already thirsty and crops have failed. Furthermore, even a brief shower
cannot determine the end of a period of drought, and so there is also the
possibility of repeated false hope that results in despair.5 After dealing with
the nature and power of hunger in The Physiology of Common Life, Lewes
goes on to discuss thirst as “a disturbance far more terrible than that of
starvation” (1859: 31). He argues that “the sensation of Thirst is never
agreeable, no matter how slight it may be, and in this respect is unlike
Hunger, which, in its incipient state of Appetite, is decidedly agreeable”
(40). In this sense, thirst takes on a character of an extreme greater than
hunger, with no redeeming qualities. In terms of physiological need,
hunger and thirst can be envisaged within the same spectrum, with thirst
exceeding hunger in terms of its debilitating power. Once one feels thirst,
one is already dehydrated; but with hunger, the initial stirring in the
stomach does not signal starvation. This physiological understanding
mirrors the onset of drought, although famine is also difficult to frame.
Even so, as Lewes observes, the human body can survive much longer
hungry than it can thirsty, and the implication is that it is more possible to
relieve hunger than it is to relieve thirst; once thirst has come, the situ-
ation is more bleak.
It is within the despairing context of “the more urgent evil of thirst”
that Martineau sets her tale (Martineau 2004: 297). The Swing Riots of
1830 developed in a similar way to thirst, initially seeming innocuous, but
developing from machine breaking into the destruction of any objects of
perceived oppression, including workhouses, then destroying food sources
by burning barns full of grain and rick-­burning, to the macabre maiming
of cattle. Protests over the price of corn turned into political protest, but
descended into cruelty and self-­destruction. Peter Jones comments that
protesters “rarely, if ever, requested higher wages or set out to destroy
threshing machines alone. Instead, they expressed a series of interrelated
demands which can only be properly understood when taken together”
(2007: 275). The complexity of demands reflects the chaotic response of
the people, who were responding not just to hunger, but to thirst and,
within that response, a desperate fear and hopelessness in not knowing
when the drought would break. In Sowers Not Reapers, the opening scene is
one of a dislocated and fragmented community, fraught by its inability to
contend with either nature or human government:

Others were also abroad, with the view of relieving their hardships
instead of seeking to avenge them. The dwellers on high grounds were
so far worse off than the inhabitants of the valleys, that they could not
quench their thirst, and lost in sleep their weariness and their appre-
hensions of hunger.
(2004: 297)
118   Lesa Scholl
The tale centres on the misfortunes of the Kay family, with Mrs Kay, who is
present in the opening scene, ironically succumbing to alcoholism. The
devastation of drought is intensified by Mrs Kay’s memories of abundance,
which she reminisces over with her sister-­in-law, Mary, as they trespass on
the property of Mr Warden, the miller, in order to smuggle water from his
spring: “When I used to have my fill of meat every day, I little thought that
the bread I ate with it would grow scarce among us” (299). In this time of
extended drought, lines of criminality, like property borders, are broken
down in the community. Yet rather than condemning the women for tres-
passing and theft, Mr Warden sympathises with the women’s plight; after
all, whereas they look for water, he looks for wind to power his mill.
Neither they nor he have the ability to control the elements in order to
produce what they need. The sympathetic response in this community is
what prevents its ultimate devastation.
The tragedy of Mrs Kay’s situation is exacerbated by her alcoholism. It is
telling that while there is no water to drink, let alone to replenish the fields,
there is access to relatively cheap alcohol. Mrs Kay confesses to her husband
that she drinks to dull the pain of hunger, but her addiction overtakes her:
even when food is offered, when times seem to be improving, she is unable
to eat. She succumbs to her addiction in the end; and her hopeless ennui
reflects the desolation of unquenchable thirst. After her husband and family
have helped her to stop drinking alcohol, and she is “taking nothing stronger
than tea” (361), it remains that food is still in poor supply: “poppies coming
up instead of wheat, and stones strewed where lambs should have been
browsing” (370). In her last cold moments, Mrs Skipper, the baker, who was
sitting with her, recounts that Mrs Kay “kept stretching [her hand] out as if
she thought to reach something; and I supposed she was thirsty” (377), yet
this action is an impulse of her habit of drinking alcohol. Although Mary
pleads with her, “it was hunger that did all that! Don’t dwell upon that!”
(377), Mrs Kay cannot forgive herself, and dies, in a fading manner, voicing
her self-­recriminations. The drought of Sowers Not Reapers portrays the most
lethargic, hopeless state of society along the lines of Lewes’s view of thirst.
Mrs Kay gives up hope, much in the same way as the men who raid towns in
the depth of night, causing devastating criminal damage. The loss of com-
munity boundaries in this way – the inability or refusal to respect the prop-
erty or boundaries of others in a seemingly unhuman quest for destruction
(or self-­destruction in Mrs Kay’s case) – is evidence of having lost hope of
ever being able to regain an investment in the land and community.
Mrs Kay’s destruction is an individual, human representation of the
effects of natural crop failure on the community. Nature is more central
to the community’s concerns than political interference or selfish neglect
because it is more immediately present; yet the event of food destruction,
which was prevalent throughout the Swing Riots, provides evidence of
their social hunger and desperation. Martineau describes this response in
terms of economic panic:
 Chaotic interruptions in the economy   119
There had been enormous importations of corn during the winter, –
importations which in the end proved as ruinous to the corn-­dealer as
the farmer at home. The bargain with the foreign corn-­growers having
been made in a panic was agreed upon at a panic price. The foreign-
ers had naturally laid heavy duties on corn, both because it was known
how much the English wanted food, and because what they bought
was not a surplus regularly grown for sale, but a part of the stock of
the countries they bought of. In the midst of a panic, and in entire
uncertainty how long the ports might be open, the corn importers
could not possibly calculate how much would be wanted, any more
than the people ascertain how much was brought in.
(357)

This account reveals the way in which political economy’s obsession with sta-
tistics and mathematical formulae falls down in the face of human, affective
response to scarcity. All figures are operating on panic rather than ration-
ality because numbers cannot be known. Economic politics clearly comes
into play on an international scale, with foreign traders not invested in the
plight of the starving British; rather they see an opportunity to take
advantage of the situation, perhaps justifying their actions to themselves on
a moral economic level through the fact that they are reselling what they
have themselves imported. However, as seen in French Wines and Politics, this
kind of exchange invariably leads to the prosperity of the seller, for whom
maintaining the profit margin is the most essential aspect, and for that
margin to diminish would be considered an irrecoverable loss.

Britain’s investment in revolutionary France

French Wines and Politics parallels Sowers Not Reapers in the way they both
engage with food destruction by violent mobs. The setting of revolutionary
France buys into the continuing fear of the Terror within Britain, which per-
sisted well into the Victorian period, and breathes through the chaos of Mar-
tineau’s other economic tales.6 Martineau uses the French setting to speak
to British concerns by emphasising Britain’s economic and social investment
in France. This tie is reinforced by geographical proximity: just as there was
widespread fear of the Terror seeping across the Channel into Britain, it is
possible that weather cells that devastate France could also move across Brit-
ain’s shores. Beyond the possibility of sharing weather events, though, the
close economic ties of the nations through trade agreements meant that any
sudden loss of crops in one nation would affect the prosperity of the other.
In this sense, Martineau makes Malthus’s “laws of nature” even more related
to the natural environment, than to political behaviours. The real hurricane
that Martineau references in her tale may not have meteorologically crossed
the English Channel, but its impact was felt throughout Britain and Europe
in the months and years to come due to the force of destruction on crops.
120   Lesa Scholl
At the beginning of French Wines, two episodes of crop destruction are
juxtaposed, deliberately tying the political world to the pangs of the natural
environment. In the first, the Marquis de Thou, with a party of boar hunters,
chase a wild boar through crops and vineyards. The response of the people
is one of apathy. When Steele, an English businessman, questions the vine-
yard owner, Antoine, about his inaction, Antoine responds:

It is the only way to keep what we have left…. There is no use, but
much peril, in complaint. Redress there is none; and ill-­will towards
the lord’s pleasure is resented more deeply and lastingly than injury to
his property.
(Martineau 1833b: 9)

Antoine’s slippage into the term for the English aristocracy – “lord”
instead of “marquis” – linguistically ties the two businessmen together,
alongside their business transactions. Antoine’s passive acceptance,
though, also suggests that he will be able to recoup his costs in a way that
characters who do not at this stage have a voice would not be able to;
Antoine, like his brother Charles the winemaker, has enough wealth to
endure the marquis’ destructive pleasure.
In contrast to Antoine’s acceptance, however, the devastating hurricane
of the next day gives voice to the broader community. It rouses within the
people the resilience and outcry necessary for revolutionary determina-
tion. The preternatural noise of the hurricane becomes inseparable from
the hungry uprising of the people, operating as a deliberate motif of the
volatile, self-­destructive power of hunger, and as a persistent response of
the natural world to the trauma of the nation. The storm returns through-
out the narrative, sometimes as thunder, sometimes as rain, to undergird
the violence of political unrest with the violence of the natural world. The
climactic scenes at the Bastille, and then with the guillotine, take place in
the rain, blood mixing with water; while the eye of the storm creates a
pregnant, ominous moment in the text, with the king fortressed in the
Tuileries, and soldiers and revolutionaries outside huddled around fires.
Yet, as much as Martineau uses the hurricane as a metaphor and a dra-
matic literary device, it is crucial to her economic illustration that this
hurricane was a real, historical event that caused material damage to the
land and produce:

Throughout Guienne, the Orleannois, and other provinces, not a

score of revolutions could efface the recollections and traditions of
the hurricane of July, 1788. Perhaps it may still be a subject of dispute
a century hence whether it was charged, in addition to the natural
agents of destruction, with a special message to warn the French
nation of their approaching social convulsion.
(1833b: 18)
 Chaotic interruptions in the economy   121
Martineau adopts the long-­standing myth of climatic violence as divine
judgement upon an unjust society (Walter and Wrightson, 1976; Walsham,
1999; Mukherjee, A., 2015). Crucially, though, she recognises that the
storm had more than a prophetic role in bringing about the revolution.
She catalogues the crop-­destruction caused by the hurricane in much
more detail than that of the boar hunters the day before; and it is evident
that the more significant devastation by nature led to the notably bad
harvest of 1788:

The corn-­fields were one vast morass. The almond groves were level with
the ground; and of the chestnut woods nothing remained but an assem-
blage of bare poles. The more exposed vineyards were so many quag-
mires, and many dwellings were mere heaps of ruins. All who witnessed
were horror-­struck at the conviction of general, immediate, pressing
want; and the more thoughtful glanced forwards in idea to the number
of seasons that must pass away before all this damage could be repaired.
(1833b: 12–13)

Indeed, the devastation caused by this hurricane has been closely linked
to the French Revolution. Historian George Rudé notes its effects on
bread prices, which was particularly dire given that bread made up approx-
imately 50 per cent of the French diet:

In September 1788, when Parisians were celebrating the parlement’s

second return, a sharp increase in the price of bread transformed the
scope and nature of the riots. In the following April, the Réveillon
riots in the Faubourg St. Antoine were probably due as much to the
high price of bread as to the manufacturers’ attacks on wages: in fact,
food shops (but no others) were broken into, and the lieutenant of
police himself believed that the insurgents had the twofold aim of set-
tling accounts with Réveillon and of compelling authorities to reduce
the price of bread.
(Rudé 1964: 108)

It is important, then, that Martineau does not focus only on the immediate
destruction of food by nature, but also on the irrational food destruction
by angry crowds, and the long-­lasting effects of both on the economy: she
is able to emphasise the economic inequalities that contribute to social
unrest. Unlike the political economists that Malthus references, through
literary representation Martineau is able to explore the causal complexi-
ties of economic instability and political unrest; and in doing so, she chal-
lenges political economy’s narrative of barely fazed progress in light of
environmental disaster.
Although Martineau’s tales were understood to be promoting political
economy, it is evident that only a few characters in each tale can afford to
122   Lesa Scholl
hold to its tenets. Her own claim of the complexity of her presentation can
be inferred from her response to her readers in her Autobiography: “but it
certainly seems to me that this course of imputation originated some obscure
dread of me and my works among timid and superficial readers” (Martineau
2007: 169). In French Wines, Antoine’s brother, Charles, espouses the ideals
of rational political economy; yet on closer observance he is shown to be able
to hold to this philosophy because, first, he comes from a position of luxury
and, second, he himself profits economically by the hurricane, and is able to
justify his progress to himself morally in spite of the plight of the poor. His
wealth and his investment in foreign markets enable him to diversify his eco-
nomic role: when the French cannot afford to buy his wine, Charles is able to
exchange his surplus wine for fruit from Italy and the Levant. He also pur-
chases large quantities of grapes from Steele, his brother’s English colleague,
to sell as fruit instead of wine, and in turn sells Steele his surplus second-­
grade wine for England, for

the demand for fruit in London being at present insignificant in com-

parison with that for claret, and the direct reverse being the case at
Paris, it was Steele’s interest to transmit more wine and less fruit, and
Charles’s to take fruit in exchange for his wine. It was therefore settled
that, in addition to their standing bargain for first-­rate wine, Steele
should have a large choice of second-­rate claret, in payment for chest-
nuts from Spain, oranges and citrons from the Madeiras, olives from
the Levant, and almonds from Italy.
(1833b: 31)

Like the utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and Robert Owen, Martineau bought
into the idea of a free market. However, this conviction was not unqualified.
The network of foodstuffs throughout Europe is central to Martineau’s vision
of free trade, but it also reveals the way in which trade takes advantage of
lack, and promotes self-­interest as a moral good over the interest of the com-
munity. In this way, Charles and Steele both represent what Regenia Gagnier
refers to as the “manifold irony” of Adam Smith’s political economy, “that
selfish individuals could make an altruistic society; that the pursuit of profit
could be an ethical failing in an individual but lead to the wealth of all”
(Gagnier 2000a: 316). The resolute blindness towards the real suffering
caused by such economic and social visions remains problematic in terms of
human concerns. Martineau thus challenges the ideals of utilitarianism that
would enable and give traction to the 1834 New Poor Laws.
When Charles “eagerly” tells his wife, Marguerite, of the great progress
being made in society through the character-­building nature of starvation
and hardship, he evokes Malthus, saying: “I see every day, not only splen-
did instances of intellectual effort … but moral struggles and self-­sacrifices
which dispose me more than ever to bow the knee to human nature”
(Martineau 1833b: 41). Malthus claims in the Principle of Population that
 Chaotic interruptions in the economy   123
The sorrows and distresses of life form another class of excitements
which seem to be necessary, by a peculiar train of impressions, to
soften and humanize the heart, to awaken social sympathy, to generate
all the Christian virtues, and to afford scope for the ample exertion of
benevolence.
(2007, first published1798: 144)

Yet this view affords room for Charles’s justification of self-­interest in a way
that Marguerite does not allow:

But why should the corn-­owners be enriched by the scarcity of bread,

and you by the destruction of vineyards? You tell me that your gains by
this storm will nearly compensate the losses it has cost you. Is this fair?
(Martineau 1833b: 36–7)

Marguerite draws attention to corn-­growers – those who produce bread.

The growers are profiting by the starvation of their customers, who can no
longer afford even the bare staples. Britain is implicated in this unjust
prosperity through Steele’s participation and success in the French market
following the hurricane, and Steele, Charles and Antoine all participate in
the self-­interest that Malthus warns against:

The advocate for the present order of things is apt to treat the sect of
speculative philosophers either as a set of artful and designing knaves,
who preach up ardent benevolence and draw captivating pictures of a
happier state of society, only the better to enable them to destroy the
present establishments and to forward their own deep-­laid schemes of
ambition…. The advocate for the perfectibility of man … brands him as
the slave of the most miserable and narrow prejudices, or as the
defender of the abuses of civil society, only because he profits by
them…. In this unamicable contest the cause of truth cannot but suffer.
(2007: 2)

Marguerite, in fact, represents the moral truth of the matter, although

“the best and safest means of removing abuses” (Malthus 2007: 3) remain
elusive. It is because of this elusiveness that political economy avoids these
questions; yet it remains that these three men represent a class that
ironically, and even perversely, profits through the advent of the storm.

The taste of dispossession, food security and imperialism

Britain’s foreign investment is taken further in Cinnamon and Pearls, for
where French Wines essentially deals with two imperial nations in trade
agreement, Cinnamon and Pearls portrays the effects of imperial disposses-
sion. The narrative focuses on Marana and Rayo, a Cingalese couple who
124   Lesa Scholl
represent the dispossession of their nation, both culturally and economic-
ally, by the East India Company. Like the rest of their community, they are
impoverished and unable to make a living sufficient to buy food; but even
worse, because of the imperial company’s dominance, they are also not
permitted to grow their own food. While Sowers Not Reapers ends in a tone
of continued devastation, with “the pressure of want, – the main spring of
the vast machinery of moral evil by which society is harrowed and torn”,
and the desolate repetition of “How long? … How long?” (Martineau
1833c: 378), Cinnamon and Pearls ends with an idealised sense of com-
munity restoration. However, the devastation leading up to the moment of
restoration persistently haunts the text’s conclusion. It is important to
recognise the different types of weather events that cause devastation in
the three texts: the drought, as I have already noted, is a very different
kind of event that is difficult to define; the hurricane of French Wines is
more definite, while the monsoon in Cinnamon and Pearls, while still
destructive, is a seasonal event: as such, while it cannot actually be control-
led, it can be predicted, which creates a sense of order. Martineau disrupts
this order, however, by having the monsoon arrive late. It is left to the
superstitions and witchcraft of the locals to try to find some sense of order
and control in the face of this delay, calling into question any kind of eco-
nomic agency.
The lack of control over weather systems in Cinnamon and Pearls func-
tions as an extension of the dispossession of the Cingalese. Like the hurri-
cane in French Wines being situated as an omen of revolution (as well as a
cause), the lateness of the monsoon rains, which causes the rice-­fields to lan-
guish and the mountain-­tops to “crave … the light clouds which floated
around” (Martineau 1833a: 65), is seen as a punishment to Marana and
Rayo, who have had to move inland after Rayo was tempted to steal pearls
when given the opportunity to be a pearl-­diver for the imperial company.
Marana is particularly preoccupied with the myth of the sea-­hag, her
“troubled spirit” interpreting the “moaning of the rising wind … and the
dull roar of the distant sea” as “hags riding the blast, and curses cradled in
the clouds” (66). When Marana sells a charm in order to get money for
food, Rayo jokingly asks “[d]oes it not taint your fingers with leprosy” (67);
yet within this jest there is an accepted rhetoric of superstition that provides
an explanation for disease and starvation – the material effects of disposses-
sion. Within her tale, though, Martineau refuses to deny or diminish the
material causes: Mr Carr, the East India Company’s overseer, observes that
the prevalence of elephantiasis and leprosy in the Cingalese population
would be lessened if they had “flesh to eat, or good bread, or even the sea-
soning … necessary to make their vegetable food [agreeable]” (45).
Cinnamon and Pearls suggests a significant difference from French Wines
and Sowers Not Reapers in that it seems to deal with luxury, auxiliary items
rather than staples: cinnamon, cardamom and salt are spices and season-
ing, considered exotic to a European readership, whereas the bread of the
 Chaotic interruptions in the economy   125
other two texts speaks of the necessaries of life. However, spices are also
used for food preservation, and Martineau also emphasises the economic
importance of these crops in terms of supply and demand as well as owner-
ship. As Mr Carr observes, too, the agreeability of food is important: what
seems exotic in Europe has actually been central to the diet of the
Cingalese. The implications of the devastation of these crops, then, are as
serious as that of corn or wheat for the European. The situation is further
complicated, however, by the fact that the Cingalese still cannot access
these foods, even if the crops are good, because they are sold by the East
India Company to a foreign market. Access to taste is crucial to cultural
and social agency; therefore, the fact that the Cingalese are denied access
to their traditional flavours speaks to their social and political disposses-
sion as much as it does to their economic impoverishment.
The starvation of the Cingalese is related to their denial of tastes, which
is akin to hunger, illuminating absence in a way that sparks recognition of
inequality and injustice. Sensory historian Mark M. Smith argues that
“[h]unger threaten[s] to catapult man back in space and time, rendering
him more animal than human”, and further that “[s]carcity of food
peel[s] back civilized man’s exterior and reveal[s] an animal that would
eat anything to survive” (Smith 2015: 90–1). In this sense, not having the
capacity to distinguish tastes is equated with dehumanisation, in a way that
relates keenly to imperial justifications for dispossession. It is evident
throughout Martineau’s text that the Cingalese are read in animalistic
terms, without a recognition that they have been rendered such through
the actions of empire. Smith argues that “taste bestow[s] status, interlac-
ing consumption with aesthetic worth” (89), while David Hume remarked
on the othering nature of taste – that we call barbarous whatever departs
from our tastes (1757: 203). Therefore the response to tastes in Cinnamon
and Pearls determines a character’s social agency in relation to empire as
much as it has very real implications for survival. Hunger is visceral, while
taste is acculturated; but in Martineau’s text they become entwined, as she
reveals that being denied tastes had deep ramifications not just for ideas
of civilisation, ownership and belonging, but for food security in a context
in which certain foods or tastes are culturally inappropriate, or certain
preparations are deemed necessary.7
The way Martineau uses the language of taste access to express disposses-
sion is heightened by the complex interaction of the natural world, and the
brutality of the monsoon season, first by its delay, and then by the way it
silences the dispossessed further. The silencing reaches its climax in a scene
of crop destruction. Like characters in French Wines and Sowers Not Reapers,
and indeed in the same vein as the historical 1775 Flour Wars throughout
France, other European food riots, and the destruction of grains during the
time of England’s Corn Laws, Rayo seeks to destroy the cinnamon planta-
tions with fire as an act of protest. His act is one of desperation, as one who
has no legal access to the produce, but is forced to work in the fields to help
126   Lesa Scholl
profit the Company. Although preceding Marx’s Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844 by more than a decade, Martineau presents the essence
of alienated labour, with the Cingalese doubly estranged from their selves,
first through their loss of access to taste, and then through having to labour
for another’s taste and economic gain. Marana, watching her husband’s act,
hopes that the destruction of the field would drive away the East India
Company, or at least “[drive it] from its monopoly, so that every man might
plant cinnamon in his garden” (Martineau 1833a: 70). However, Rayo’s
protest is destined to go unheard: not only is the devastation blamed on a
lightning strike during the monsoonal storm that is concurrently taking
place, Rayo overhears one of the managers commenting on how much the
Company benefitted by the destruction because the crop had been too
good. They would have wanted to destroy some of the crop to push up prices
anyway, and this destruction meant that they could blame the monsoon,
rather than give rise to the ire of the locals, who could not afford to buy it
(75). That the prices are pushed up, benefitting the imperialists in the same
way that figures like Charles, Antoine and Steele are benefitted in French
Wines, speaks to the ultimate powerlessness of figures like Rayo and Marana.
The monsoon reveals Rayo’s lack of agency and control in the way that “the
fire he kindled did not catch the green shrubs; but some flakes were carried
off by the wind, and fell among the parched grass near the outskirts of the
plantation” (72). He has as much control over the fire he sets as he does
over the natural world’s delay in sending the rains, thus rendering the land
in medium-­term drought, or the sudden arrival of the storms when he seeks
to destroy the crops, as he does over the economic ramifications of his
actions for the imperial organisation.
The text’s engagement with droughts and monsoons ends suddenly
with a policy change that is not explained, but which allows the Cingalese
to grow and sell their own cinnamon. It could be assumed that this is the
outworking of Marana’s hope, if not for the fact that the Company had
been aware already of their oversupply. Furthermore, as much as this
ending offers some kind of hope of agency, it seems ultimately a false
hope, given that Rayo will still die of disease. The convenience of Martine-
au’s ending allows her to conclude with the dangers of a monopolistic
economy so that she can assert her belief in free trade; but this ending
remains haunted by the image of Marana desperately selling Mr Carr’s
daughter, Alice, the charmed conch-­shell, risking the vengeance of the
sea-­hag for the dream of “a basket of steaming rice, stewed with carda-
moms or peppercorns” (63). Such a simple meal returns to the fact that in
times of dearth, some classes of people will suffer more than others. Mr
Carr himself explains to his daughter the unequal distribution of wealth
and its impact of people being able to receive the necessaries of life:

There is salt enough for every body here, and for half India besides;
and large quantities are destroyed every year, to keep up the price,
 Chaotic interruptions in the economy   127
while many are dying for want of it…. If we could count the number
of Hindoos [sic] who die in India for want of salt which their own
country produces, we should find that a fearful reckoning awaits the
Company there, as there does the government here; a fearful balance
of human life against a high price of salt.
(45–6)

While Mr Carr is able to attempt compassion across cultural and geo-

graphical zones, looking to the Indian context, he fails to recognise his
own similar investment in Ceylon’s cinnamon trade. As one of Martineau’s
morally and intellectually aware proponents of political economy, Carr’s
unwillingness to do anything to disrupt the power of the East India
Company is telling: as much as he positions himself as moral and caring,
Carr is still driven by self-­interest. He will only act in the community in
ways that do not disrupt his own economic privilege. Mr Carr is described
as being “pleased” by the destruction of the monsoon: “Not that he wishes
ill to the natives, or to the eaters of cinnamon in other lands. But he is
thinking of the good news he has to send to his employers” (75). Upon
hearing that this was the “result of his enterprise”, Rayo “rolled himself in
the sand”, mirroring the ancient act of mourning by covering oneself in
dust and ashes.

Conclusion
Throughout Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy, the role of the
physical, natural environment operates to overturn any human assump-
tion of power, violently usurping hubristic attempts to create order in
society and the economy. The natural world will always have precedence.
Rather than maintaining the aspect of most political economists, who
avoided contending with natural disasters, in Martineau’s work, these dis-
asters are brought to the fore in order to critique the mathematical simpli-
city of economic models, as well as the obsessive willingness of those who
professed political economy to maintain the myth of the theory’s moral
grounding. As much as she may provide details of political economic
theory in her tales, Martineau also refuses to deny the human cost that the
implementation of such theories would entail. The human cost is most
effectively shown through the effects of, and response to, natural disasters
– factors that would continue to plague the globe, and are, arguably, even
more pertinent in our contemporary world. Although forecasting systems
have been developed, and are able to predict storms, floods, and even
droughts to an extent, it is not possible to prevent them from happening;
it is only possible to mitigate their effect. In this way, the physical environ-
ment reflects the global economy; for as much as economics depends on
narratives of order, the systems in place are actually volatile, essentially
unpredictable and ultimately uncontrollable. Martineau is problematically
128   Lesa Scholl
blind to colonial and cross-­cultural sensitivities in a way that could be seen
as buying into a similar ethos to the imperialists engaged with the East
India Company or other British trade; but this broad stroke is a gambit for
her deeper concern regarding the application of economic theories at
home as much as abroad. She overturns arrogant assumptions of political
economy through her assertion of climatic devastation; yet at the same
time, and somewhat idealistically, such disasters have the potential to
bring communities together to formulate solutions in their wake. These
solutions, however, prove more effective on the local level (although that
impact also remains limited), rather than depending on broad national or
international structures to assert order into chaos. Ultimately Martineau
rejects institutionalised structures of relief in favour of community-­based
human interdependence.

Notes
1 See a more extended discussion of the critical reception of Martineau’s eco-
nomic tales in this regard in Scholl (2011: 105–10).
2 The Swing Riots took place throughout the south and east of England. Agricul-
tural workers and labourers were protesting against harsh working conditions
and the increase of machinery in farm production. The name comes from the
fictitious “Captain Swing” in whose name threatening letters were written to
landowners and magistrates. The participants were feared by many for their mid-
night raids and machine-­breaking.
3 See Rudé (1964: 108) for a detailed discussion on this impact.
4 The Corn Laws (1815–46) were a tariff on imported grains, designed to keep
domestic grain prices higher. The result for many was that bread was unafforda-
ble and much ended up wasted.
5 The way in which droughts resist structural definition affects any kind of institu-
tionalised relief or aid. However, in Martineau’s tale, there is an entire absence
of institutionalised charity. In general, Martineau distrusted such institutions.
Her fictional works emphasise the importance of community-­based relief that
focused on the individual relationships and interdependence between members
of the community across classes.
6 Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, journalists, politicians and
commentators referred to The Terror of the 1789 French Revolution as a point
of fear and aversion, particularly in regard to social and political reform. It was a
persistent narrative in both official political documents, the periodical press and
novels. For further discussion see Scholl (2016: 16–20).
7 In the following chapter, Sanjay Sharma discusses how food insecurity could be
exacerbated due to the cultural inappropriateness of food served in north
Indian poorhouses during nineteenth-­century famines.
7 Poorhouses and gratuitous
famine relief in colonial
North India
Sanjay Sharma

The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by numerous

famines in India that impacted the ways in which the colonial state and its
subject population faced issues related to hunger, poverty, and welfare.
Indeed, questions of starvation, disease, death, and the responsibilities of
the state informed nationalist constructions and critiques as well as colo-
nial claims of progress, improvement, and ameliorative policy interven-
tions. Famines generated debates on the responsibilities and duties of the
state, and interventions in the form of relief were accompanied by an
acceptance of the idea that famines were not produced by “unmanagea-
ble fate, whether natural or supernatural” (Robb, 2007: 50). Driven by
these impulses, and a belief in its technological, institutional, and ideo-
logical abilities, the colonial state sought to formalise famine relief
through commissions and codes in the closing decades of the nineteenth
century. The extensive reports and relief policies they generated were
arguably “the first written statements of famine policy in the modern era”
(Hall-­Matthews, 1996: 216). While this may be true of the formalisation of
relief, there is a rich and elaborate pre-­history of the idea of state relief
itself and its practice from the late eighteenth century, aspects of which
have been explored by a growing number of studies (Damodaran, 1998;
Sharma, 2001; Ahuja, 2004). Episodes of scarcities, epidemics, and
starvation-­deaths since the Bengal famine of 1769–70 generated debates
about the relevance of European ideas about the role of the state in man-
aging the markets and the poor subjects of the colony. While famines
were blamed on “natural” causes, as well as the inadequacies of the indi-
genous systems and people, as the nineteenth century progressed, the
idea that famines could be mitigated with state intervention grew
stronger. Eventually this was enshrined in the famine codes towards the
end of the century, and the notion of state responsibility, however
limited, was embedded in the idea of relief. Official relief policies were
driven by the core idea of offering work to the able-­bodied in return for
subsistence payment either in cash or kind. However, it was also recog-
nised that many persons in need were not in a position to work and the
ameliorative measures that were devised for them came to be officially
130   Sanjay Sharma
classified as “gratuitous charity”.1 Gratuitous charity was meant to take
care of those in need who were not in a position to work.
Before the 1860–61 famine in northern India, gratuitous relief work was
mainly in private hands. The general official view was that the state should
refrain from direct involvement in it and if those having links with the
colonial establishment wished to indulge in acts of gratuitous relief they
should do so in their private capacity. During subsistence crises and other
disasters, charitable acts were undertaken by voluntary organisations run
by Europeans, missionaries, and administrators along with their families
that were often supported by indigenous elite and notables attached to the
emergent colonial regime. Simultaneously “native” expressions of kind-
ness and benevolent practices of assistance that were witnessed in normal
times, as well as during crises, were perceived to be driven by personal
charitable impulses that were intricately embedded in religious and cul-
tural practices of the inhabitants of the colony. Hence, charitable acts that
were considered gratis by the early colonial regime were expected to be
undertaken as voluntary humanitarian initiatives located in the non-­state
private realm of the colony. However, a significant shift occurred in the
policy towards gratuitous charity during the 1860–61 famine in northern
India when the novel institution of the poorhouse made its appearance
and it emerged as the most important agency of state-­sponsored gratuitous
relief (Srivastava, 1968: 343). This chapter tracks this noticeable shift in
policy and traces the principles, practices, and institutional trajectory of
poorhouses from the second half of the nineteenth century in northern
India, most of which was then administratively organised as the North-­
Western Provinces (NWP) and Awadh.
The region had experienced a severe subsistence crisis accompanied by
widespread famine-­crime during 1837–38. Official estimates attributed
800,000 deaths to it, a figure that appears to be conservative as its demo-
graphic effects lasted well into the 1840s. Hunger, death, and disease were
inscribed in popular memory as the famine came to be remembered for a
long time as the terrible chauranvee (“of the year 94”, i.e. the year 1894 in
the indigenous samvat calendar, corresponding to 1837 ce). Later official
accounts of this famine emphasised that the 1837–38 famine was the first
one in which a system of famine relief was devised that laid the founda-
tional principles of state-­sponsored work-­based famine relief programmes
in India. Based on the principle of “less eligibility”, those considered
“able-­bodied” were offered subsistence wages in return for work done on
what were officially described as “works of public utility”. At the core of
this was the official view that the famine was caused by a natural calamity
(drought) leading to loss of employment, which could be remedied by
setting the needy to work in return for wages. It was assumed that this
would create demand, and the supply of goods would ensue if the market
forces were allowed to operate. Employment of the famished poor was also
supposed to prevent crime and vagrancy and, by ensuring sustenance, it
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   131
would take care of shortage of labour likely to result from death and
migration. But above all, benevolent state relief would delegitimise the
undesirable charitable practices of indigenous elite and, by establishing
the superiority and efficacy of institutional relief, strengthen the ideo-
logical claims of the colonial state as the fountainhead of philanthropy
and humanitarian governance.
The next major famine occurred in northern India in 1860–61. The
region started experiencing “dry and unfavourable” weather conditions
from the summer of 1858 leading to successive crop failures. During the
summer of 1860, till 13 July 1860, “scarcely a drop of rain had fallen in the
Doab” (Girdlestone, 1868: 71). Reports of dwindling stocks of grain and
rising prices particularly in parts of Rohilkhand raised an alarm in official
circles. On 18 July, Lt. Governor G. Edmonstone issued a Memorandum to
all Commissioners as a precaution, but also expressed deep apprehension:

It is impossible to look forward without deep concern to the serious

and general distress which the continued want of rain must inevitably
produce, and to the crime which cannot but be anticipated as the
natural and certain consequence; and it becomes the duty of the gov-
ernment to devise measures which shall give suitable employment to
the poorer classes of the population, and so keep them from starva-
tion and from crime.
(Baird-­Smith, 1861: Section I, para 24)

Hence it was made clear that official relief policies were to be structured
around the core idea of work, and therefore all those who were needy and
wanted state-­support were expected to do some work. This policy was thus
a continuation of the principles of relief enunciated during the previous
famine of 1837–38. Accordingly, during the famine of 1860–61, the
departments in charge of irrigation and public works were instructed to
employ people on “works of utility”. Wages were meant to be as low as pos-
sible so as not to adversely impact the wages that a person could get by
working elsewhere. In the famine-­affected districts, between 40,000 and
50,000 people were employed every day, mainly on the irrigation works
being built by the government and by the East Indian Railways that ran
through the middle of the central area worst affected in the famine tract.
Thus “setting people to work” was the central principle around which
relief policies were organised for the “able-­bodied”.
However, it is in the sphere of gratuitous relief, i.e. for those unable to
perform any work (described as “helpless”) that the most noteworthy and
significant policy decisions were taken for the first time in this region. In
the previous famine of 1837–38,

Commissioners were empowered to disburse unlimited sums on behalf

of any and every one who would give labour in return for food; but
132   Sanjay Sharma
gratuitous charity was discountenanced as involving a policy which
Government could neither beneficially or generally pursue. The
support of the helpless it was argued, was incumbent on private, and
not on public, benevolence.
(Girdlestone, 1868: 44)

Departing from this “absolute separation between private and public

benevolence and the disowning of all governmental responsibility of the
destitute” (Mukherjee, U., 2013: 67), gratuitous relief for the “helpless”
during 1860–61 was sought to be given a concrete organisational shape by
laying down clear principles to govern it.2 In December 1860, the govern-
ment issued orders for the constitution of local relief committees in the
headquarters of each district affected by famine. The committees were
authorised to invite private contributions, and to coordinate their work a
Central Relief Committee was established in the city of Agra that met every
week from 9 January 1861 onwards. All district-­level relief committees were
to report their collections and activities to the Central Relief Committee
that allocated funds while making efforts to raise aid in India and in
England. The Central Relief Committee devised and advocated a number
of steps for gratuitous relief of those considered helpless (e.g. for veiled
(pardanashin) women) and orphans. However, its most notable and ingen-
ious measure was the establishment of “relief houses” that were also called
“poorhouses” (called mohtājkhāna in Hindustani; from Arabic mohtāj:
“poor” or “needy”, khāna: “place” or “residence”). The first relief/
poorhouse was opened in January 1861, and till 30 April 1861, in the
famine tract and the districts bordering it, 26 central and 75 district relief
houses were established where, on average, a total of 80,000 persons were
being relieved daily (Baird-­Smith, 1861: Section I, p. 16). The last of the
relief houses carried on till September. Of these, the poorhouse of
Moradabad, a district in the Rohilkhand region of the NWP, emerged as a
prototype that enunciated the core principles around which poorhouse
relief came to be structured.

The principles and organisation of poorhouses

The Moradabad poorhouse was created and supervised by its Magistrate
and Collector, John Strachey and Syed Ahmad Khan. Khan was the prin-
cipal Sadar Amin of Moradabad at that time, who subsequently founded
the Muhammedan Anglo-­Oriental College and emerged as a key social
reformer and educationist in the late nineteenth century. Strachey wrote a
report on the principles that guided the relief measures undertaken in
Moradabad that provides fascinating insights into the theory and practice
of poorhouses in the context of famines in the colony (Strachey, 1862).
The report conceded that, in principle, a poorhouse was to be a place to
provide subsistence to those who were unable to perform any productive
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   133
labour and were in official terms not able-­bodied. However, providing free
(gratis) support to the “undeserving” was an undesirable idea and
indiscriminate public charity was considered to have “evil” consequences.
Strachey made this absolutely clear:

The general principles upon which public charity ought to be

afforded are equally applicable to the able-­bodied and the infirm. In
both cases, it is a great evil that recourse should be had to charity,
until no other alternative remains. It is a serious mistake to suppose
that every person, apparently unable to work, is a fit object of charity.
The evils of indiscriminate private charity are universally admitted. It
has been too commonly forgotten that indiscriminate private charity
is far worse. The latter has all the evils of the former, in an aggravated
shape, and it is doubly injurious, because it is a public recognition of a
false and mischievous principle. Under the pressure of extreme
famine, it is true that the difficulty of discrimination may become too
great to be contended with, and it is possible that in some districts this
may have occurred already. But such cases must be extremely rare,
and until distress becomes altogether unmanageable, there can be no
reason for the disregard of the obvious principles upon which public
charity ought to be administered. The problem, as Mr J.S. Mill has
said, is, “how to give the greatest amount of needful help, with the
smallest encouragement to undue reliance upon it.” This is equally
true whether relief is given to the infirm in the shape of simple
charity, or to the able-­bodied in return for labor performed.
(Strachey, 1862: 4–5)

Thus the principle of setting people to work lay at the heart of state relief
for those classified either as “able-­bodied” or those deemed “helpless”. In
the rules for the relief of the “helpless” it was made absolutely clear at the
outset that those adults and children who were found fit to be able to
perform light work, like carrying a basket of earth, were not to receive any
gratuitous relief and were to be dispatched to a “labouring gang” (Girdle-
stone, 1868: Appendix IV, “Rules for the Relief of the Helpless in
1860–61”, No. I). The biographer of the 1860–61 famine, Col. Baird-­
Smith, affirmed that the “principle that all who can work shall work in
ways suited to their capacity should be carried out as much as possible”
and desired that all relief houses for the “helpless” should be “gradually
developed into a true work-­house” (Baird-­Smith, 1861: Section I, 25 May
1861, para 22). Strachey had also emphasised that “the establishment of a
poor-­house should at the same time be, strictly speaking, a work-­house”
(Strachey, 1862: 5). In his view, making relief-­seekers do some work would
enable the separation of the deserving and undeserving as, otherwise,
“professional beggars, fakirs, Brahmins, and imposters” managed to grab
a bigger share of relief than those who were “really fit objects of charity”.
134   Sanjay Sharma
Clearly the implication was that these groups were disinclined to work and
should therefore be discouraged to partake of state charity in poorhouses.
By stressing that “charity shall be, as far as possible, only afforded in
exchange for labor” (Strachey, 1862: 13), official policy made it apparent
that work and labour defined useful living, and unproductive sections of
the subject population had weak moral claims on state benevolence. Con-
sequently, poorhouse inmates were engaged in tasks like cotton spinning,
manufacture of cloth, niwar (coarse broad tapes often used to lace beds)
and durries (mats), rope-­making, grinding corn, road-­making and building
sheds for the poorhouse (ibid.: 10–11). The products were sold for money,
although Strachey observed that these activities were “undertaken without
any idea of profit, and even if they had been carried on at a loss, they
would not the less had been expedient” (ibid.: 10).
The second crucial feature of poorhouses was the serving of cooked food
to its inmates. This had been tried in earlier relief measures and, from the
1830s, arguments in favour of serving cooked food in prisons had found
acceptance among officials and doctors of the colonial establishment. Its
ideological context was provided by the emergence of the workhouse as the
key institution in Britain and its other colonies since the New Poor Law of
1834. Intended to be houses of correction, the workhouses were often
described as “prisons”, especially in their early years, but where work
replaced the whip (Reinarz and Schwarz, 2013: 1–16; Pemberton, 2013).
Among other aspects, a distasteful and unappetising diet contributed towards
making the workhouse a place of deterrence. These ideas found reflection in
the colonial drive to reform prisons in India in the early nineteenth century.
For example, the 1838 report of the Committee on Prison Discipline pro-
pounded a new structure of prison management in which punishment was
intended to ensure what has been described as the “right calculus of terror
and deterrence” (Yang, 1987: 30). In this, serving a diet of cooked food was
favoured for its disciplinary aspect. The next step in that direction was the
introduction of the system of messing that was introduced in Bengal prisons
in the 1840s. In this system, convicts were to be divided into groups and
cooked food was to be substituted for money or rations. This invited hostility
from prisoners for a number of reasons. Cooked food increased the working
time of the convict by taking away the time they spent in cooking, reduced
the choice of what they ate, how they varied their diet and acquired desirable
products like tobacco (Singha, 1998: 281). Above all, cooked food threat-
ened the caste and religious identities of the prisoners and several instances
of serious opposition to it were reported from the jails of Bengal Presidency.
However, the government was firm in dealing with them and was determined
to implement the policy of serving cooked food to its prison inmates. This
practice stepped out of colonial prisons and became the defining feature of
poorhouses that appeared during the 1860–61 famine in the NWP.
In the model poorhouse at Moradabad, elaborate rules were laid down
for doling out cooked food. Cooked food was given only once in 24 hours
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   135
with little variation in the food that was served. Collector Strachey’s report
that was much cited in official circles reasoned:

The general good health of the paupers has shown that there is no
necessity for more frequent meals. Hitherto, there has been no vari-
ation in the diet, except that different kinds of dáls have, from time to
time, been supplied. Persons for whom other food is necessary can
obtain it from the hospital.
(Strachey, 1861: 9)

Rations were uniform for all classes of adults and children and the single
meal consisted of 10 chat.aks of flour and 2 chat.aks of dāl (pulses) for each
“working pauper” while “non-­workers” received less.3
Separate cooking arrangements were made for Muslims and others who
had no objections on grounds of caste. For them cooking was done by
contract, something that was found to be “least troublesome and most
economical”. For Hindus with caste-­prejudices, Brahmin cooks and kahars
(caste of carriers with low social status) were engaged but the amount
served to both the groups was the same. In Strachey’s view, the system was
so designed to keep out all those who had other means of support and the
amount of food was just about sufficient to preserve the health of the
poor. He also pointed out that the system of serving cooked meals worked
well to ensure checks and reduce fraudulence. The purchase, preparation,
and distribution of food were to be supervised by a sub-­committee com-
posed of the “respectable members of the Native community, with some
trustworthy officer of Government as e.g., A Native Deputy Collector, or
Tehseeldar as their President” (Strachey, 1861, No. IV).4 The government
insisted that one or more of its officers should be part of each such local
committee to not only “safeguard against waste or abuse of funds” but to
ensure that “fundamental rules” were followed and to ensure “uniformity”.
There are several aspects here that are similar to the administration of the
new Poor Law in England. Felix Driver has noted a similar quest for uni-
formity in his study of the workhouse system in England: standardisation
of local procedures, to make local relief practices consistent with and
conform to the principles laid down by central authority, and to level out

Table 7.1 Poorhouse food rations

Flour Daal
Adults of both sexes 8 chataks 1½ chataks
Children above 10 years 6 chataks 1½ chataks
Children below 10 years 4 chataks 1 chatak
Children in arms 2 chataks 1 chatak

Source: Strachey, 1861: 9.

136   Sanjay Sharma
the variations in pauperism, that was often implied but not explicitly advo-
cated by the architects of the new Poor law as room was left for local vari-
ations (Driver, 1993: 47–8).
When Baird-­Smith prepared his report on the famine of 1860–61 he
stressed that relief should be interpreted liberally and should include
relief from hunger and nakedness, and medical treatment and hospital
comforts, while the nature of food should be cautiously adapted to the
strength of the relief-­seekers. However he expressed unreserved support
for the practice and principle of cooked food:

Relief from hunger by the supply of cooked food is the main character-
istic of the system … in fact it is a corrective of or a preventive to
abuses, that the supply of cooked food works so well, and excepting in
very special cases, and under very peculiar circumstances. I am satis-
fied it should be rigidly adhered to; I found an absolute unanimity on
this point among Native Committees, and as all personal details con-
nected with the food are left exclusively to them, the plan has not in
my experience been the subject of a single complaint.
(Baird-­Smith, 1861: Section I, p. 14)

Poorhouses become unpopular

From the mid-­1860s a number of famines affected Madras, Bihar, and par-
ticularly Orissa, which was struck by a severe famine in 1866. By the time
of the next official famine (1868) in the NWP, the principles of famine
relief tended to get more standardised. The government of India gave
instructions that gratuitous relief was to be provided to those incapable of
labour and residence in poorhouses (a term now freely used for relief
houses). This was generally enforced (Henvey, 1871: 5). A large number
of poorhouses were opened but their function was highly unsatisfactory, as
noted by several reports and the Famine Commission (Srivastava, 1968:
75). Mismanagement, lack of funds, and poor living conditions plagued
the poorhouses. In most cases, cooked food was served, usually once a day,
although rations and money were also distributed occasionally. Cooked
food was served as a norm and the amounts were broadly the same as
those given by Strachey in Moradabad.5
However, serving cooked food in poorhouses became a vexed question
and contrary voices appeared soon after its supposedly successful imple-
mentation during the famine of 1860–61. Caste Hindus were averse to
eating cooked food in poorhouses and regarded it as disgraceful. This
was widely reported by lower level officials in charge of administering
relief during the Orissa famine of 1866 (Srivastava, 1968: 76).6 The fear
of losing caste and respectability discouraged many people from attend-
ing poorhouses during 1877–78 in the affected districts of Rohilkhand.
For Moradabad, it was observed that “the Hindu better classes never
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   137
consent to take bread or anything cooked from any person’s hand, other
than their own relations” (“Letter from Roy Kishen Kumar of
Moradabad”, n.d. 1878). This deterred most of the cultivators and others
who, it was said, “would rather die of hunger than go and take food in a
poor house, as they consider it against their religion and caste” (ibid.).7
Loss of caste in poorhouses gave rise to fears among poor cultivators that
they would be ejected from their lands by zamindars on return, and this
reportedly did occur (“Petition from Munshi Parmanand, Tehsildar of
Aonla, 28 May, 1878”).8
Significantly, there were several cases of women who were turned out of
their houses by their husbands for having gone to the poorhouse:

Mustt9 Naseban, wife of Chhidda, caste Sheikh, residents of Bhainsia

within the limits of the Moradabad city Police Station, 3 miles distant
from the city left her village during the famine and was admitted in
the poor house but when the famine was over, she went back to her
house, but contrary to her expectations, she was turned out of her
house by her husband, for having gone to the poor house and taking
bread there. The poor creature thereupon attempted to commit
suicide. The case was chalaned [sic] to the Court and the woman was
sentenced to 3 months simple imprisonment. She died a few days ago
of gripes in prison…. The same was the fate of all the women of cultiv-
ators who had left their houses during the famine.
(“Letter from Syed Imdad Ali, Deputy Collector of Moradabad,
2 June 1878”)

In a later famine (1897) “disquieting rumours” were circulating in Jhansi

suggesting that women, who would accept aid will be required to leave
their house, go and render some work either in a relief centre or a poor-
house and that the government would confiscate their property after their
death.10 The upper castes were quite averse to the idea of being housed
and confined to the poorhouse space with low caste chamārs (leather
workers), bāghbans (gardeners), and julahas (weavers). In Badaun, a poor-
house was opened on 17 September 1877 on the principles laid down by
the government, in 1874, where separate cooks were employed for Hindus
(Brahmins and Kahars) and Muslims; but as the Collector noted, the
inmates were unwilling to stay on for a number of reasons:

I can account for the dislike in accepting relief at the Poor House only
to the general objection to giving up home and freedom and under-
going the confinement necessary if such relief is accepted and also to
the fear of being turned out of caste, a very strong feeling amongst the
rural population in this District, but which doubtless been overcome
by degrees had the distress continued much longer and had a larger
number of paupers thus been able to see for themselves what the
138   Sanjay Sharma
arrangements for cooking the food were. Some recruiters came to the
District at the commencement of the cold season and enlisted 205
emigrants for Demerara. I have since heard that this gave rise to a
rumour that if the people come to the Poor House they would be sent
across the seas.
(Collector Badaun, 21 May 1878)

Despite the efforts of the administration to make appropriate cooking

arrangements so that caste equations were not disturbed, poorhouses con-
tinued to arouse suspicion and invite hostility. It was reported that “the
very name of the poor house is hated by the Brahmins, Chowhans, Jats
and other better classes” because of fears of caste interference as there was
“a large number of the Chamars, Baghbans, Julahas & the other low born
people in the poor house” (“Letter from Raja Jagat Singh of Jajpur, 28
May 1878”). When the Famine Commission initiated its inquiries in the
late 1870s, C. A. Elliott, the Secretary of the Commission, asked Syed
Ahmed Khan to give his observations on the unpopularity of poorhouses
in the NWP, in the light of his experiences of managing the poorhouse at
Moradabad during 1860–61. Khan was asked to comment on the reports
received from various officials of the NWP and Awadh that recorded the
enormous dislike poorhouses generated among virtually all sections of the
society except those who were starving wanderers. In 1878 poorhouses had
experienced heavy mortality: those who entered them were usually beggars
who were already sick before coming to the poorhouses, and many died
after leaving them. Poorhouses hardly attracted other classes as they were
highly averse to eating food in government establishments and were
unwilling to leave their homes (“Reports by Messrs. Benett and Roberts
and Captain Pitcher, deputed by Lt Gov. to enquire into the causes of
mortality and in North-­Western Provinces and Oudh (and) regarding the
feeling entertained towards the poor-­houses”, in Report of the Indian Famine
Commission, Part III, Famine Histories, 1885).
In his reply, Syed Ahmed Khan recalled his experiences of running the
poorhouse in Moradabad in 1861 and enumerated the principles on
which it was run. He admitted that as “no arrangement could conveniently
be made with regard to caste system at such relief works, therefore only
those persons who did not mind caste restrictions, and who were some-
what strong and healthy, were ordered to such works” (“Note by the
Honourable Syed Ahmed Khan Bahadur, C.S.I., on the causes of the
Unpopularity of the Poor-­houses in the North-­Western Provinces and
Oudh during the famine of 1878”, in ibid.: 252). Khan clarified that
persons admitted into the poorhouse were separated according to their
castes and sub-­castes and, in fact, those Hindus who “no longer observed
the caste system” as they had accepted alms and food from anyone earlier
were clubbed with Muslims. Khan reiterated his opposition to distribution
to relief in the form of money and rations as it had “evil” results, like
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   139
consumption of unwholesome food and embezzlement. He added that
one of the best principles of running a poorhouse was to make it a place
that only admitted those who could not support themselves in any other
way. He also rejected the view that poorhouses should be located near the
residences of the needy as this was not practical, and it also negated the
basic principle that made poorhouses places of deterrence. He concluded
that deviation from or violation of these principles had led to mismanage-
ment of most poorhouses, rendering them unpopular.
However, Syed Ahmed Khan’s “Note” to the Famine Commission
offered no solution to the problem of caste Hindus in poorhouses. The
“model” poorhouse at Moradabad that he managed admitted only those
who did not mind caste restrictions, having lost their caste purity prior to
entering the poorhouse. Poorhouses established since 1861 therefore
found it very difficult to handle the issue of caste because most caste
Hindus feared loss of status on entering and leaving poorhouses. Poor-
houses mainly attracted those who had run out of other modes of survival:
beggars, wanderers, the sick and the infirm, or abandoned old people and
children. Mortality was often high, and sometimes also because inappro-
priate food was served. Thus, for example, bread made of kachcha (raw)
gram instead of wheat was served to inmates of the poorhouse in
Moradabad in 1878. The gram was not parched (it was noted that even
horses required parched gram) and as a result “the poor people could not
digest such bread and consequently lots of men, women and children died
of indigestion, notwithstanding the poor house having been inspected by
the station surgeon everyday” (“Letter from Syed Imdad Ali, Deputy Col-
lector of Moradabad, 2 June 1878”).11 Hence a number of factors made
poorhouses unattractive: confinement away from home, acceptance of
cooked food leading to ostracising from caste, ejection from land, sickness
and mortality, and “as a receiving place for enforced emigrants to coun-
tries beyond sea and as a means for obtaining converts to Christianity”.12

Poorhouses beyond famine years

Despite the popular dislike of poorhouses, the colonial administration per-
sisted with them and they became an important part of state-­sponsored gra-
tuitous relief. The government was aware of popular feeling, but there was
also a belief among some in officialdom that more than considerations of
prestige and caste, “natives” were accustomed to free support from their
rulers without rendering work. For example, in the Ajmer Division, a large
number of Marwaris flocked to the poorhouses between March and August
1869. They reportedly refused to work saying that they had come “to be fed
by the Sircar, not to work” (Henvey, 1871: 92). Henvey’s report disagreed
with the explanation that social pride and aversion to manual work made
the Marwaris refuse work. Instead, he was of the view that it was “not the
custom of Native States to demand labour from starving paupers”. Such
140   Sanjay Sharma
people expected alms not wages from the government, British or Native
(Henvey, 1871: 92). Hence, though designed for those unable to work,
poorhouses were imagined by colonial administrators in principle as
workhouses, i.e. places where inmates were to be encouraged and made to
do some work. Official animosity persisted towards the “generous dole of
lavish and indiscriminate charity” practised by the “richer and better-­
educated classes”, particularly for religious mendicants, that made it “inex-
pedient to take any steps for the establishment of workhouses” (“Report on
Operations of the Central Committee Relief Fund, North-­Western Prov-
inces, 1868–69, 1870”, in Arnold, 2008: 126). It seems that the colonial
regime was averse to any institutional measure that provided succour
without work, suspecting that it would lead to undesirable dependence on
the government. Thus, as far as possible, poorhouses were expected to be
places of work and quite often their inmates were sent off to labour on
relief works as soon as they regained a little strength to do so.13
Despite being unpopular and riddled with problems, poorhouses were
deemed necessary and were not abandoned, and famine codes made a pro-
vision for them as they encapsulated desirable values of labour, diligence,
and discipline. Described as “the commonest mode of administering gratu-
itous relief ” detailed information was sought by the government from offi-
cials about their structure and organisation with the directive that
poorhouses were to admit those unfit or unwilling to work with compulsory
residence and provision of cooked food (“Circular Asking for Information
on Matters connected with the Relief and Prevention of Famine”, from C.
A. Elliott, Secy. to the Famine Commission, 22 June 1878). The Famine
Commission of 1880 posed a set of questions for officials from all parts of
British India seeking comprehensive answers about the issues plaguing
poorhouses that were classified under “gratuitous relief ”:

The commonest mode of administering gratuitous relief is through

the poor-­house. What is the proper situation for a poor-­house so as to
secure accessibility, discipline, space, water and proximity to food-­
supply? Is an enclosure wall or fence necessary, and of what should it
be made? What total area is desirable in proportion to the whole
number of inmates? What shape and material are best for the huts,
and what sleeping space (in superficial area) should be provided for
each inmate? How they may best be arranged with a view to ventila-
tion, &c.? How should latrines be placed and managed? What is the
maximum number you would accommodate in one poor-­house? How
should the inmates be separated and classed together, so as to provide
for the requirements of caste, for the keeping of families together,
and for the separation of the sexes in case of persons who do not
belong to families?
(Report of the Indian Famine Commission, Part III,
Famine Histories, 1885: Ch. III, Question 23)
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   141
Several other questions were asked seeking responses of officials on “con-
ditions of admission to poor-­houses”, “compulsory detention” in them,
rations, organisation, hospital arrangements, and “disposal of convales-
cent poor-­house inmates” (ibid.: Question 24–9). The extensive replies to
these questions often displayed sharp differences in opinions and experi-
ences of those responsible for running poorhouses. For instance, highly
contrasting opinions on the question of compulsory detention in poor-
houses were received from the North-­Western Provinces. One official
observed that all persons “wandering about and begging” along with those
too weak to work “should be compelled to go to a poor-­house” (ibid.: 239,
reply to Question 25 by Mr Sandys), while another one went to the extent
of criminalising them and advocated forceful detention:

I would allow no discretion to a starving incapable man of refusing

poor-­house relief, unless of the middle or upper classes. I treat all
such as criminal lunatics, and bring them in by force. Once in, it
requires force to eject them. Yes, I would certainly have legislative
authority for the purpose. I see no risk or fear. All that is necessary is a
discretion to the magistrate of the district to issue orders for the
sending of this class of people when in danger of starvation, if they
belong to the labouring classes.
(Ibid.: Reply by Mr Colvin)

The opposite view was articulated with no less force and backed by
arguments:

It does not appear to me desirable under any circumstances to make

residence in a poor-­house compulsory. The paupers resident in a
poor-­house are practically demoralized, being rejected as outcasts by
their neighbours, having cast off all sense of respectability or shame,
demoralized by want of food, and the mental imbecility which attends
starvation, and learning in the poor-­house to disregard all ties of
family; it is not desirable that persons should be compelled to enter
such a place.… It was for a long time … believed that all the inmates
of a poor-­house were to be first made Christians, and then transported
beyond the seas. Even after this idea was dispelled, the mass of profes-
sional mendicants preferred their own independence with the pro-
spect of starvation.
(Ibid.: Reply by Mr Kennedy)

Thus there were conflicting expectations from the poorhouses. While the
colonial authorities in principle were not in favour of giving anything
gratis and expected work in return for any assistance even in poorhouses,
the popular norms and expectations ran contrary to that. Official advice
to “native” elites continued to firmly stress that they should avoid
142   Sanjay Sharma
indulging in muftkhairāt (literally, “free charity”) as it made the recipients
slow, lazy, and dull (sust) (Qahat Sāli Ke Zābate [Rules for Famine Years],
1897: 7).14 During famines, the needy did come to the poorhouses, but
once the conditions improved even the poorest stayed away from them
because of insistence on work and cooked food. So, for example, an offi-
cial from Bengal was of the opinion that

relief through a poor-­house, i.e., in an enclosure, in which at stated

times cooked food is served out, although suited for beggars, lepers,
worn-­out prostitutes, and the very lowest castes, is wholly unsuited to
meet the requirements of an extensive famine.
(Report of the Indian Famine Commission, Part III, Famine Histories, 1885:
231, reply to Question 23 by Mr Metcalfe)

Beyond the famine years, poorhouses increasingly became hospices for

beggars, lepers, the disabled, and those who were physically or mentally ill.
Official belief hardened that the poor preferred begging, and many
administrators argued that poorhouses were required as they could regu-
late street begging. Beggars were also allowed in poorhouses in several
instances and by some codes (Srivastava, 1968: 170, 180–1). One report
from Bijnor observed that even after raising wages in relief works

yet men do not go to works in large numbers. They are seen begging
in villages & towns and after a few days they are so reduced that Tah-
sildars have to send them to the Poor House which has so overflowed
with them that its expenditure is enormous.
(Robkar dated 28 February 1878, in “Abstract of Orders Issued on the
Occurrence of famine in the Bijnor district 1877–78”)

This was widely reported:

I have often heard the people say that Govt. aided the people without
any work even during the former temporary famines but they were at
a loss to know why hard labour was taken this time while the country
was suffering from the horrible famine. It appeared to me, that these
people expected aid from Govt. without doing any work. But it was
impossible to meet their desires and also inexpedient.
(“Petition from Munshi Parmanand, Tehsildar of Aonla,
28 May, 1878”)

Arguing in favour of establishing poorhouses, one official admitted that,

to begin with, “the benefits of the poor house may be confined to the
blind, lepers and persons otherwise utterly destitute and physically incap-
able of supporting themselves,” but efforts should be made to find some
light work they were capable of. In his view, the poorhouse would
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   143
“regulate street begging since the really indigent would be provided for,
and it would become the duty of others to work and not to beg”
(P. Carnegy, Officiating Commissioner, Faizabad, 20 August 1870). News-
papers in districts and mofussil towns appealed to local administration that
beggars should be sent to poorhouses. Thus, the Bharat Jiwan from
Benaras reported that “famine-­stricken women and children are to be
found wandering about in the streets of the town and begging alms. The
police should send them to the poor house” (Bharat Jiwan (Benaras),
4 January 1897, Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers Published in the
North-­Western Provinces & Oudh, IOR L/R/5/74, British Library, London;
hereafter Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers). Elsewhere in Allahabad,
famine-­stricken people “wandering on the streets” were caught by the
police and sent to the poorhouse. However, it was further noted that many
continued to beg for alms and refused to go to the poorhouse, complain-
ing that “the food supplied at the poor-­house does not appease even half
the hunger of the natives” (Prayag Samachar (Allahabad), 7 January 1897,
Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers). Complaints about insufficient
meals at poorhouses were common even when two meals were being
served (Bharat Sudasha Pravartak (Farrukhabad), December 1896, Selec-
tions from the Vernacular Newspapers). Yet, generally, many vernacular news-
papers were of the opinion that the police should remove the beggars and
send them to poorhouses. Requests and appeals for the opening of poor-
houses also appeared in the vernacular press. For example, a poem in
Urdu published in Mehr-­i-Nimroz described the wretched famine con-
ditions that were forcing people to eat water-­chestnuts, and appealed to
the government to open poorhouses otherwise “men may begin to eat one
another” (Mehr-­i-Nimroz (Bijnor), 28 December 1896, Selections from the
Vernacular Newspapers).15
Poorhouses in India may have originated as part of gratuitous famine-­
relief policy of the colonial state, but they came to have a life beyond the
famine years. Their establishment and management were entrusted to
municipalities. Provision for establishing municipal corporations in the
major cities of India was made in the mid-­1860s that also had a close con-
nection with the sanitary and medical management of cities (Mann, 2015:
336). Most poorhouses had a dispensary attached to them to treat the sick.
They were usually run by a Trust and while their establishment was initi-
ated by the government or the municipality or sometimes by wealthy
Indians, their running costs were met by regular contributions or subscrip-
tions from various quarters. A poorhouse was established at Nawabgunj in
Barabanki in 1872 with subscriptions of taluqdārs and government ser-
vants. Initially its expenses were met by monthly contributions; when a
certain amount of money was accumulated, it was decided to stop the sub-
scriptions and invest the capital in government securities and bank.
However, when the interest proved insufficient subscriptions were
resumed. Some money was also realised by selling fruits and vegetables
144   Sanjay Sharma
grown on poorhouse land. The total number of poor (divided into four
categories: blind, lepers, poor, and boys) relieved in the poorhouse during
the year 1885–86 was Rs. 11,143, but most of them came and left and did
not stay for long spells. The number of poor remaining on 30 September
was 30, and most of the budget of the poorhouse was spent on the diet of
the inmates. In 1885–86, the total annual income of the poorhouse was
Rs. 886 while its expenses were Rs. 1,223. Diet accounted for Rs. 510 in the
expenses and it had risen because of “dearness of corn & and the
increased number of poor”. The annual report observed that the poor-
house admitted “only those poor who cannot work” (“Poor House Annual
Report of Nawabgunj, Bara Banki for 1885–86”). Elsewhere, another poor-
house in Bahraich was also managed by a Trust that invested its money in
Government Promissory Note at an interest of 4 per cent.16 Most poor-
houses were administered by a committee that had Indian members along
with a district official but sometimes they were in the charge of civil
surgeons.17
By the first decade of the twentieth century, the desirability of having a
poorhouse in each district or municipality was being expressed by senior
colonial administrators. The commissioner of Allahabad wrote to the offi-
cers of the districts under him advising them to open a poorhouse in their
respective districts (if it was not there already) as it was “a perfectly legiti-
mate way of expending municipal money and the amount of the cost would
not be great” (Letter from Commissioner Allahabad, 4 February 1906,
Dept. of Scarcity). He also observed that when the price of grains rose it
affected “wanderers badly”, and then a poorhouse was the “legitimate
direction for the expenditure of Municipal Coin and in it a part may be set
aside for lepers” in case there was no separate asylum for lepers (Letter
from Commissioner Allahabad, 26 January 1906, Dept. of Scarcity).18 In his
reply, one district collector observed that a poorhouse would be started
once private charity contracted “to turn paupers adrift” (Letter from Col-
lector Fatehpur to Commissioner Allahabad, 13 January 1906). It was being
noted that the creation of paupers was a pragmatic gain to the administra-
tion, threatened by the persistence of local private charity. It also seems
that local administration came to view poorhouses as places where those
living on the margins of society could be confined. Beggars, lepers,
paupers, vagrants, and orphans were often clubbed together and excluded
as they were stamped with stigma and criminality in varying degrees. Many
officials assumed that there was revulsion and fear among Indians who also
wanted to shun and avoid these groups. To what extent this prevailed
among local communities of Indians, and whether they believed stigma
and marginalisation justified confinement, is difficult to assess here.19
Despite the colonial attempts to stigmatise these groups, support for them
within local communities did not diminish drastically. Driven by religious,
ritual, and cultural obligations, charitable practices persisted even towards
those considered “undeserving” in official perception. In fact, appeals for
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   145
private charity were often made by colonial functionaries during famines,
especially when distress increased to supplement state relief. Europeans
and well-­off Indians were exhorted to rise to the occasion and donate in
line with their eleemosynary impulses. Famine relief funds were created
mainly in urban centres for collections which strengthened the idea of
organised impersonal charity for public good.
This aided the emergence of “a more precise notion of welfare” in
the early twentieth century when the cycle of killer famines abated, espe-
cially after the First World War (Arnold, 2008: 128). In the early decades
of the twentieth century, day-­to-day charity of common Indians was
“moving away from personal and largely religious acts to secularised,
collective and organised undertakings that were intended to benefit
much bigger, transregional groups or ‘communities’ ” (Watt, 2005: 65).20
Thus, some desacralisation of charity occurred as modes of giving
changed and new ideas of seva (service) took root that were informed by
older ideas of charity and practices and forms privileged by the colonial
regime. This led to the evolution of “associational philanthropy” that
enabled non-­elitist sections to participate in social service, fundraising
often suffused with the ideas of sacrifice and love and for nation-­
building (Watt, 2005: 66; cf. Sundar, 2000).

Conclusion
Unlike in Britain, poorhouses in India had their origins in famine relief,
specifically in the famine of 1860–61 in colonial north India. As a part of
the policy of gratuitous relief they were organised around the idea of “less
eligibility” and were not meant for those who were deemed “able-­bodied”.
Initially, their primary purpose was to prevent starvation-­deaths and to just
about restore the health of the famished inmates to enable them to work
again and return them to a life of productive labour. As a matter of prin-
ciple, every inmate was expected to do some useful labour, however light,
even if she/he was incapable of doing so. This was grounded in the belief
that any form of assistance, including gratuitous relief, should not encour-
age indiscriminate charity. This belief had its roots in the shifts that had
been occurring in Europe, particularly from the sixteenth-­century post-­
Reformation period, as a result of which indiscriminate alms-­giving and
beggary came to be regarded as inimical to the needs of a capitalist bour-
geois society (Frohman, 2008: chapters 1 and 2; Hindle, 2001). This led to
attempts at rationalisation of charity and the establishment of houses of
correction in most European countries.21 By the nineteenth century, pau-
perism, vagrancy, and criminality further stigmatised the marginal sections
of society and institutional mechanisms emerged in Britain in the form of
workhouses after the New Poor Law of 1834 (Driver, 1993). These work-
houses, that were products of a specific utilitarian dream, served as the
prototype for poorhouses when they were conceived by the colonial
146   Sanjay Sharma
bureaucracy in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Physical, geo-
graphical, and spatial confinement, insistence on extraction of work from
even the most feeble and debilitated inmates, a monotonous daily regu-
lated routine, a frugal subsistence diet and denial of all indulgence char-
acterised the poorhouses. As a corollary, virtues of discipline, diligence,
and obedience were sought to be inculcated in the inmates who, in official
perception, were to be weaned away from undesirable indigenous charity
that encouraged indolence, dependence, and parasitism. Indian charit-
able practices came to be located in non-­Christian religious superstitions,
and were described as desultory and arbitrary, in need of reform. Poor-
houses were thus presented as alternative models of rational and institu-
tional philanthropy. They served as illustrative examples of the ways in
which utilitarian ideas were practised in the colonial context, which in
addition to being paternalistic had little regard for the perspectives of the
subject population. As Gagnier’s influential study of Victorian economics
and aesthetics points out, utilitarian reformers treated the poor and the
needy as means to an end and for “their own social planning rather than
ends in themselves” (Gagnier, 2000b: 224–6).
The successful functioning of poorhouses was marred by a number of
factors. The insistence on serving cooked food, and work and confine-
ment away from homes, prevented many needy caste Hindus and women
from coming to the poorhouses. Despite official efforts to take care of
these objections, over a period of time, poorhouses became unpopular
and even hated institutions that were shunned even by those rendered
destitute either due to famine or impoverishment. Yet they were not shut
down as they came to house the extremely sick, indigent, beggars,
maimed, orphans, and often lepers. The colonial administration there-
fore persisted with the poorhouses beyond famine situations and
entrusted their management to municipalities. Exclusion and confine-
ment of these extremely marginalised sections of society found support
among, certainly, elite Indians, many of whom also gave donations for the
establishment and running of poorhouses. However, poorhouses
remained under-­funded and too few in number, and assisted only a very
small percentage of the population. Though metropolitan in their origins
in terms of their core ideas and principles, they eventually failed to
address the problem of poverty and hunger in the colony. As institutions,
their impact was therefore limited and they hardly served as “tools of
empire”, but the excavation and recovery of the principles and practices
embedded in them sheds light on a lost chapter in the history of hunger
and institutional care in India.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Pragati Mohapatra, Tanuja Kothiyal, and Ayesha
Mukherjee for their comments and suggestions. I am grateful for the input
 Poorhouses and gratuitous famine relief   147
that I received on my paper presented at the conference held in Oxford
in 2015, which has resulted in this publication. Thanks are also due to my
colleagues at Ambedkar University Delhi for providing the intellectual and
institutional milieu in which many of my ideas took shape.

Notes
1 The famine reports of the late nineteenth century classified governmental
remedial measures under the category of “gratuitous charity” meant for those
considered incapable of work, for example, the old, sick, infirm, maimed,
“idiots and lunatics” etc. See among others, Report of the Indian Famine Commis-
sion, Part III, Famine Histories, 1885 and Report of the Indian Famine Commission,
1898. This was distinguished from private charitable acts undertaken by indi-
viduals in their personal capacity.
2 The ambivalence about whether and how to separate private and public
benevolence had a long history in the provision of English poor relief, going
back to the early modern period. Similar debates about the “deserving” and
“undeserving poor” led to a separation of private and public charity measures
in the context of the 1590s famines in England. For details, see Hindle, 2004:
15–95 and Mukherjee, A., 2015: 10–13, 20–1. For some aspects of hospitality
and alms-­giving in late Elizabethan England and their complex relationship
with the statutory welfare provision, see Hindle, 2001.
3 Chat.ak, literally one-­sixteenth. One ser contains sixteen chat.aks, and is equi-
valent to approximately 930 grams or 2 lbs, i.e. a little less than a kilogram.
4 For a useful description of gratuitous relief in the NWP and the working of the
poorhouses during the famine of 1860–61, see Srivastava, 1968: 38–45.
5 Those who were served cooked food in the poorhouses were divided into three
categories: adults (16 oz flour, 4 oz vegetables); children above 10 (12 oz and
2 oz); children below 10 (8 oz and 2 oz) (Henvey, 1871: 6).
6 Apparently the Brahmins of Puri, Cuttack, and Calcutta were consulted on the
issue of accepting cooked food during the 1866 Orissa famine. Among the
pundits “opinion was unanimous that no act committed to save life occasions
loss of caste”. However some pundits did insist on purificatory rituals with some
payment (Blair, 1874: 200).
7 There is a substantial literature on the cultural and ritual significance of
cooked and uncooked food in South Asia. See, for example, Khare, 1993, and
Bhushi, 2018.
8 This was, however, denied by others. See, for example, “Letter from Syed
Imdad Ali, Deputy Collector of Moradabad, 2 June 1878”.
9 Mustt: abbreviation of Musammat, an Arabic word meaning “woman” or “wife”,
usually written before a woman’s name, often in official documents.
10 Reported by the Jhansi correspondent of the Nasim-­i-Agra of 7 January 1897 in
Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers.
11 In another instance cited in this letter, a chamar woman was served the food of
seven or eight persons for “immoral purpose” by two brothers known to
commit adultery. Ibid.
12 These factors created the “dread of entering the poor house” in Shahajanpur.
See “Note on the Scarcity in Rohilkhand Division, 1877–78”.
13 An official reported that in the newly opened poorhouse at Orai “over 30 starv-
ing waifs and strays having been picked up on the roads, fed and drafted to the
relief works when they have become fit for labour” (Collector Jalaun to Com-
missioner Allahabad, 3 March 1896).
148   Sanjay Sharma
14 I am grateful to my historian colleague Tanuja Kothiyal for sharing this docu-
ment with me.
15 The original poem is not cited in Selections.
16 The Trust also received private contributions from local notables like the raja
of Payagpur. (“Poor House Trust in the District of Bahraich during the year
1893–4”).
17 When poorhouses were opened in Kalpi and Orai they were under the charge
of the civil surgeon who maintained them through his subordinate staff.
However, attempts were being made to administer the poorhouses according
to famine code rules and not leave them under the civil surgeon. See Collector
Jalaun to Commissioner Allahabad. Div., 13 February 1896.
18 Some collectors were in favour of keeping lepers out of poorhouses as money
was given to leper asylums separately.
19 For colonial and indigenous attitudes towards leprosy and confinement, see
Buckingham, 2002.
20 In early nineteenth century Europe, after the Napoleonic secularisation of
many religious institutions in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, benevolent
societies and charities increasingly played an important role “paving the way
for an institutionalised public welfare in the coming decades that eventually
superseded Christian caritas” (Collet and Krämer, 2017: 111).
21 In this context, a re-­reading of Foucault’s classic account “The Great Confine-
ment” is rewarding (1965: chapter II).
Part IV
Contemporary voices
and memories
8 Farming tales
Narratives of farming and food
security in mid-­twentieth-century
Britain
Michael Winter

The history of British agriculture in the twentieth century is now estab-

lished as a strong and vibrant genre within modern British history. Much
scholarly attention in the last thirty years has been given to the political
economy of agriculture, with some strong accounts of the policies and eco-
nomic factors that have shaped the technologies and patterns of produc-
tion that have characterised the industry, and to the politics of agriculture
(examples include: Brassley et al. 2012; Grigg 1989; Holderness 1985;
Martin 2000; Smith 1990; Wilt 2001). As a result, a reasonably strong con-
sensus, a dominant discourse, has emerged on the general aggregate char-
acteristics of the agricultural industry and the key policy and economic
drivers of change. The sources of data for these accounts are perhaps
rather predictable – the economic and physical data available from cen-
suses and surveys, and a wide range of policy papers. On occasions, these
official sources are supplemented with material drawn from “less official”
contemporary accounts or interpretations as gleaned, for example, from
the pages of farming magazines or from books published by contemporar-
ies. But such sources are almost invariably used for general illustrative pur-
poses. They are not the subject of close and sustained analysis in the
manner accorded to time-­series runs of numeric data, for example. As a
result, there is a tendency to draw on certain better known narratives
without any attempt being made to justify their favoured status, still less
adequately to contextualise their contributions.
This reliance on “official” and “aggregated” data means that the voices
and experiences of farmers are often neglected or at best taken for
granted. Moreover, alternative or subversive views and interpretations are
neglected. Murdoch and Ward (1997) have suggested that this amounts to
the construction of a “national farm”, and as a result the heterogeneity of
both farming and farmers alongside competing political views of agri-
culture have been neglected. Some serious attempts are now being made
to remedy these deficiencies. Voice is being given to farmers through oral
history (Riley and Harvey 2007). Alternative views of agriculture are being
explored through the lively interest in the origins and politics of organic
farming (Conford 2001) and the land question (Griffiths 2010). As a
152   Michael Winter
means of tackling the deficiencies identified, oral history and the history
of the organic or land reform movements provide excellent correctives to
some of the dominant trends in agrarian history. But there are additional
ways to take forward new ways of looking at twentieth-­century agriculture
and giving voice to others.
This chapter represents one such attempt through an examination of
some of the written works of those who set out to relate their own personal
experiences of farming, and there were many of these in the 1940s and
1950s, most, if not all, hitherto entirely neglected by agrarian and social
historians as shown in the second section of the chapter. In particular, I
focus on “working farmers”, a category developed further in the third
section of this chapter. In the remaining section of the paper I provide case
studies of three writers whose divergent and particularistic voices offer an
insight into the drive for food security in war-­time and post-­war Britain.
Questions about the role of markets, policies, and ownership structures,
that seemed “settled” as Britain dealt with the food security challenge of
the 1950s and 1960s, appear as far from settled in these works. Given that
food security requires productive and successful farmers, the category of
writers examined here are those who explicitly or implicitly set out with a
pedagogic purpose to introduce or prepare would-­be farmers to the world
of farming. The chosen three for case studies are George Henderson,
Clifton Reynolds, and Frances Donaldson. I have not included a host of
other examples from the same genre including James Gunston (1941,
1943, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1950), Robert Homewood (1947), and Frederick
Smith and Barbara Wilcox (1940, 1942, 1942, 1947, 1948), all of whom
would repay further study in the future.
My choice of three writers has been influenced by a number of factors.
On the one hand, I needed to have some contextual information, and this
appears to be sadly lacking for Gunston, Homewood, and Smith and Wilcox.
By contrast, Donaldson and Reynolds both wrote autobiographies, and
Henderson – the best known in farming circles of the three – excited various
written reviews and comment. On the other hand, I wished to avoid relat-
ively well known literary figures such as Adrian Bell, Thomas Firbank, A. G.
Street, and Henry Williamson, whose primary motivation was not to
“instruct” farmers, and whose sphere of influence extended far beyond the
farming world. Bell is openly literary, indeed he insists his works are fic-
tional, although as his son Martin Bell (of BBC reporting and independent
MP fame) indicates in the preface to the 2000 edition of Corduroy, the trilogy
is largely autobiographical. Firbank (1940) is somewhat populist, with plenty
of “human interest” elements, and more than a hint of hyperbole in places.
Henry Williamson wrote one book about farming (1941), amidst a wide
canon of literary output such as the famous Tarka the Otter. A. G. Street wrote
many books, from novels to commentaries on farming life (for details, see
Street 1969); if they have a pedagogic purpose it is to educate urban dwellers
on the realities of farming, not would-­be farmers.
 Farming tales   153
The neglect of farmers’ writings in standard
agricultural histories
Of the three writers dealt with in detail in this chapter, Donaldson is the
only one to warrant a mention by John Martin, in his important post-­war
agrarian history of Britain, and this in a discussion of economies of scale:
“overhead expenses of more specialized machines could only be justi-
fied on a minimum of 121 ha of cereals” (17). This remarkably, indeed
improbably, precise figure is drawn from page 71 of Four Years Harvest
(Donaldson 1945) and seems a meagre harvest from such a rich book.
Martin (2000) cites A. G. Street twice, in passing, and in both instances
from Street’s most famous book Farmer’s Glory (1932). Again it seems a
modest use of such a prolific and topical writer on agriculture through-
out the period from the publication of his first book in 1932 to his last
in 1964, just two years before his death. Moreover, Street’s radio broad-
casting, including appearances on the topical current affairs programme
“Any Questions”, alongside leading politicians of the day, gave him a
national reputation, and this perhaps accounts in part for the occasional
references to him in agrarian history. Nor does Street fare any better
with Philip Conford (2001), whose seminal history of the organic
farming movement contains one citation for Street. Street was not an
advocate of organic farming, though in this instance he is cited by
Conford as a supporter of the closer integration of agriculture and
health policies as advocated by many advocates of organic farming
(Street 1954). Neither Grigg (1989) nor Holderness (1985) draw at all
on Street or any of the three writers.
The main point of mentioning Street is merely to illustrate how
minimal has been the use made of contemporary writers of agriculture
in the developing historiography of twentieth-­century agriculture. Street
was prolific. He wrote thirty-­six books, including autobiographical
farming accounts, novels, and collections of his journalism and broad-
casts. He was a regular columnist for Farmers Weekly over many years. A
controversialist by nature, he wrote inter alia a novel championing the
rights of farmers in the face of war-­time bureaucracy, particularly evic-
tions (Street 1952), as well as providing pithy comment on agricultural
policy, technology, and economics. Arguably, he was the last “born and
bred” and “lifelong” farmer to be a genuine public figure known to mil-
lions. He has yet to be the subject of a full-­length paper, even if he gets
the occasional reference. Most of his contemporaries, as indicated, have
fared even worse.
One group of agrarian writers has, however, attracted considerable
attention – those who pioneered the advocacy of organic farming. Con-
ford’s history of the origins of the organic farming movement is very
much an account of key personalities and their written works. The book
contains an appendix listing the leading figures and providing brief
154   Michael Winter
biographical details. In his final chapter he issues a call to other scholars
to investigate further the various individuals and organisations intro-
duced in his book. There has been a response, with some fine papers on
seminal figures in the organic movement. H. J. Massingham (Moore-­
Colyer 2002), Rolf Gardiner (Jefferies and Tyldesley 2011; Moore-­Colyer
2001a), Jorian Jenks (Moore-­Colyer 2004), and others were fascinating
figures, as were the organisations they spawned, such as Kinship in Hus-
bandry (Moore-­Colyer 2001a; Moore-­Colyer and Conford 2004) but, as
those who have devoted so much recent effort to exploring their ideas,
concede, their impact on mainstream agriculture was minimal.
So we have two contrasting approaches to writers and their ideas about
farming represented in contemporary agrarian historiography. On the
one hand, explorations of the origins of the organic movement have
emphasised key people and their ideas; on the other hand, mainstream
economic historians of agriculture barely give them a mention.
What is so lamentably lacking is any investigation of writers and think-
ers who might conceivably have had an influence on the lives and mores
of conventional farmers, farmers who were surely not solely influenced
by the diktats of economic policy instruments or the salesmanship of
agricultural suppliers, farmers too whose gradual professionalisation
(Brassley 2005) exposed them to competing commentators on their
complex industry. In other words, what about the voices, if not of
ordinary farmers, certainly of those who engaged in mainstream agri-
culture and wrote about it? In fact, the war and immediate post-­war years
saw a flowering of rich writing about farming, chronicles of agricultural
life that helped to shape the aspirations and opinions of farmers and
would-­be farmers, as well as the perceptions of a much wider public.
Their neglect in the pages of agricultural history deserves rectifying, and
the purpose of this chapter is to begin that process. The popularity and
marketability of the literary representations of farming, which flourished
in the immediate pre- and post-­Second World War periods, probably
rests on a combination of a nostalgic ruralism, the importance of agri-
culture to the war effort, and the attractions of farming to returning
service personnel. There is also no hiding the ideological roots of some
of the writings. Of his own compulsion in the 1930s to farm, Henry Wil-
liamson wrote in the Daily Express of dreaming “of English fields feeding
English people. It seemed so natural, so true. I hoped that I might help
awaken the English to this natural truth. I wanted a revolution, in
thought and action” (Daily Express, 14 December 1938). A quote from
Oswald Mosley on the title page of Williamson’s The Story of a Norfolk
Farm confirms the direction of Williamson’s thinking at this time, but
this should not detract from the power of his book nor, surprisingly
given this was 1941, did it prevent a generous review in the Times Literary
Supplement (TLS Review, 1941: 82; on Williamson’s fascism, see Farson
1986; Higginbottom 1992).
 Farming tales   155
The agricultural context and the emergence of family and
working farmers
Britain’s food security has for more than a century and a half been largely
dependent on its ability to import food from around the world, acting as
both a colonial and a trading nation. From the 1870s until 1939 (with the
exception of the years of the 1914–18 war) domestic agriculture suffered
as result of this free trade ideology (Perry 1973; Turner 1992; Whetham
1978). And at the same time, changes in taxation, particularly death
duties, and agricultural tenancy law resulted in a decline in the proportion
of land let by landlords to tenants and a corresponding rise in owner-­
occupied farming (Cannadine 1990; Sturmey 1955). Thus the 1939–45
war commenced with Britain producing barely a third of its own food sup-
plies as a consequence of twenty years of agricultural depression (Short et
al. 2007) and a rapid process of restructuring of ownership and occupa-
tion. The agricultural industry was in a fragile state and farmers remem-
bered only too well the so-­called “great betrayal” in 1920, when the
Government suddenly removed the protectionist price policy that had
helped stimulate food production in the war (Whetham 1972). It was clear
that any new drive to increase food production, vital to the war effort,
would demand a high level of intervention, both regulatory and in terms
of price policy, combined with a firm assurance that the government
would not walk away from the industry at the end of the war (Winter
1996). However, the precise nature of the state–agriculture relationship
that would emerge in the post-­war period was not clear, and it was deeply
contested with some advocating land nationalisation, others a new social
contract between the state and farmers, and many a market solution, albeit
with price guarantees to avoid a return to depression (Smith 1989;
Tichelar 2003).
I have argued that out of this political turbulence and national emer-
gency a rejuvenated agriculture was born and, key to this, was the idea of
family or working farming which emerged as result of a particular conjunc-
ture of cultural, political, and socio-­economic forces (Winter 1996).
Culturally, the notion of family farming was promulgated in the period
roughly from the 1930s to the 1950s in literary representations in a
manner quite unparalleled before or since. In the same period, a politics
of agricultural support was forged which saw family farming as a means of
circumventing the traditional tri-­partite class-­based politics of landed capi-
talist agriculture. Economically, family farming emerged as a result of the
relative fixity of the land-­holding structure along with the declining size of
the hired labour force due to mechanisation. In short, family farming
emerged almost simultaneously as a cultural ideal, a political project, and
a socio-­economic reality.
Between 1851 and 1951 the proportion of the full-­time agricultural
labour force in England and Wales comprising hired farm workers fell
156   Michael Winter
from 80 to 63.7 per cent (Grigg 1989: 144). The number of famers
remained roughly constant. Notwithstanding, the decline in the use of
hired farm labour as a result of mechanisation, the process still had a long
way to go in the 1940s and 1950s. All three of our writers employed labour
but all three were actively involved in farm work and management too.
Were they family farmers then? Understanding the notion of family
farming has been a strong theme in rural sociology, rural geography, and
agricultural economics for some time, with the literature continuing to be
added to in an incremental manner (Brookfield and Parsons 2007;
Djurfeldt 1996; Moran et al. 1993). But academics of all disciplines are
prone to capture certain terms and to create (and contest) meanings in
such a way that attention is diverted away from everyday usage. Indeed,
sometimes the disparity between everyday use and academic definition
and conceptualisation becomes almost unbridgeable. Things may not have
gone quite that far for “family farming”, but social scientists have lamented
the imprecision with which the term is used and, in the search for defini-
tional rigour, have selected certain characteristics for particular scrutiny.
For example, conceptually, the deployment of family labour has been seen
as crucial. Consequently, the use of hired labour on “family” farms has
presented particular intellectual challenges to social scientists – does not
the presence of hired labour shift a farm from one category to another
(simple commodity production to capitalist)? If not, why not? Sociologists
and political economists have agonised over these questions, tying them-
selves in definitional knots, with views ranging from those who see farms
with any employment of labour as outside the pure family farming cat-
egory, to those who see hired labour as a prerequisite for the continuity of
family farming, allowing families to cope with the peaks and troughs of
family labour availability across the family life cycle (Friedmann 1978).
But outside of academia, the issue seems to present no such difficulties.
On the contrary, there is a quite different definitional focus within the
farming community itself to do with the importance of physical work as a
defining characteristic of a working farmer. To a working farmer, the pres-
ence or not of hired workers (unless the numbers are large) is irrelevant
to their self-­understanding. The opposing category is certainly not that of
a capitalist famer extracting surplus value (these may or may not be
referred to by “family farmers” as agri-­businesses). The contrast to a
working farmer is usually seen as either a “gentleman farmer” or a “hobby
farmer” (Winter 1986; see also Williams 1963).
The changing social and economic conditions of agriculture in the
1930s and 1940s provide an important context to the flowering of farming
tales. Although still a (growing) minority of farmers in the 1940s, the
majority of the writers of farming tales were owner-­occupiers, and a
common feature of their accounts is the trials and tribulations of finding a
farm to purchase. This is true for George Henderson and Frances
Donaldson, two of the writers featured in this chapter, and also for
 Farming tales   157
Thomas Firbank and Adrian Bell. An interesting and little known excep-
tion is Robert Homewood, whose book illustrates well some of the chal-
lenges of tenant farming, including a mobility in farming now a rarity, in
the inter-­war and war period. But in the main, owner-­occupation is a
powerful feature of the working farming narratives. As noted earlier, cul-
tural notions of family or working farming appeared frequently in literary
representations from the 1930s to the 1950s, at a time when the class-­based
politics of landed capitalist agriculture was being challenged by a politics
of agricultural support focussed on family farming.
In exploring contrasting representations of “working farming” in the
farming literature of the period, my focus is on those who wrote about
their “real-­life” experiences of farming often with an element of instruc-
tive intent – lessons about “how to farm” in the context of a need for
improving food security in a pre-­war, war, and post-­war context. Their
accounts of farming were drawn from first-­hand experience, not just of
owning or managing land but of working the land too. It is the experience
of physical work that pervades the books and gives them their quality and
their appeal, particularly to those who want to farm to produce food and a
commercial profit, rather than those who aspire to farming and landhold-
ing in terms of social position (the country squire) or recreational oppor-
tunity (country sports). My own interest in this literature dates back to
aspiring to be a farmer in boyhood. Henderson in particular appealed to
me and my father had copies from his days as an agricultural student in
the immediate post-­war period.

Henderson: the “self-­made” working farmer

George Henderson was born in 1904 into a seemingly lower middle-­class,
and definitely urban, family. His love of farming and of scrupulous busi-
ness practices emerged early when as a boy in the 1914–18 war he and his
brother, Frank, took on the job of tending some poultry for an enlisted
neighbour:

This we were quite happy to do, without also realizing that we would
continue day by day for nearly five years before our trust would be
completed. Every day we fed and watered the birds, collected the eggs,
entering the number in a book, selling them each week.…. We set two
broody hens, reared the chickens, sold the surplus birds, and banked
the profits.
… until 1919, when a somewhat battle-­scarred warrior returned to
civil life, and we expected to return the stock and hand over the
profits.…. Somewhat huskily, he made over the birds and profits for
our trouble.… The stock had grown from six birds to twenty-­seven a
good strain of real old-­fashioned Light Sussex.
(The Farming Ladder, 40–1)
158   Michael Winter
Henderson had no doubt that farming was what he wanted to do and, as
he recounts in The Farming Ladder, following this early success with urban
poultry, he set out both to learn about different types of farming and in
due course to find his own farm. He spent a year on a lowland mixed farm,
then a few months on a dairy and poultry farm. Then on an upland sheep
farm he learned more from the shepherd than he did from the failing,
and periodically drunken, farmer who eventually offered the young man a
partnership, which Henderson rejected because of his commitment to a
partnership and purchase of a farm with his brother. His quest during
these two years of learning, and in the farming career that followed with
his brother, was marked by a single-­minded work ethic that might now-
adays be seen as verging on the obsessive:

Working from five in the morning to nine o’clock at night, I had few
opportunities for spending money. …. I was very happy in my work,
finding no toil or drudgery in it.
(The Farming Ladder, 18)

We intended to work about eighty hours a week, or twice the output

of the ordinary labourer, allowing for the fact that twenty per cent of
their time is wasted for want of careful planning and real interest in
the job.… On the other hand, we proposed to live on half a labourer’s
wages, which is quite easy if a good part of one’s food is produced on
the farm.… One acquires the serenity of outlook usually found in a
monastery. One is not troubled with second-­hand opinions absorbed
from the daily newspaper. In fact for first five years we did not buy
one.…. In the hours when other young men of our class were shoot-
ing, playing cards and tennis, or taking a girl to the pictures or on the
river, we were working.
(The Farming Ladder, 39)

Certainly his hard work gave him the requisite knowledge and, with the
help of capital from his mother, he and his brother bought their Cotswold
farm in 1924 at the height of the inter-­war agricultural depression. In the
years that followed he demonstrated how a small farm could be made to
pay, an experience which he set out in meticulous detail in his books.
Henderson is the quintessential “working farmer” writer. He wrote
solely about practical farming and confined his writing to his three pub-
lished books; no journalism, no novels, and certainly no romanticised
accounts of country living. His was a philosophy of self-­reliance and the
spiritual and material values of hard work. He saw farming as both a way of
life – that was character-­building and fulfilling – and a demanding busi-
ness. His is the classic story of the self-­made man, and his ability to forge
business success at a time when many agricultural businesses were failing –
with consequent calls for government support for agriculture – led to an
 Farming tales   159
ambivalent or even hostile attitude to the war-­time and post-­war consensus
that developed around a state supported agriculture to secure food
security:

To say that only the State has the means to rebuild and equip our
farms is ridiculous; any farm which is fully productive can earn the
capital necessary to restore it, and build on for future requirements, as
my brother and I have proved on our own holding.
(The Farming Ladder, Postscript to 1955 edition, 241)

Between 1939 and 1945 the urgent need to feed the nation resulted in
unprecedented levels of state intervention in agriculture, with a raft of
measures designed to encourage and cajole farmers to raise levels of pro-
duction and to focus on calorie-­rich crops such as potatoes and cereals
(Collingham 2011). Crucial to these efforts were the County War Agricul-
tural Executive Committees (CWAEC) with tough powers to impose super-
vision orders and even to evict farmers unwilling or unable to comply with
the CWAECs’ requirements (Short 2014). Such an approach was ana-
thema to a free market proponent such as Henderson:

No chapter on wartime agriculture would be complete without some

reference to the War Agricultural Committees. We deplore that they
should have been considered necessary; it is a very great reflection on
British agriculture as a whole that each individual farmer was not pre-
pared to make the best possible use of his land in the national interests,
which are, of course, identical with his own.…. Freedom of speech was
one of the Four Freedoms in which President Roosevelt crystallized the
needs of the world – freedom of Speech, of Religion, from Want, and
from Fear. I wish with all my heart he had included freedom from
Bureaucracy, for in the committees this is found at its worst.…. What is
most annoying is to have an order served upon you compelling you to
carry out something, with all the force of the law behind it, when this
something is what you are only too willing and anxious to do.
(The Farming Ladder, 157–9)

However, it is hard to discern from Henderson’s writings quite what means

he would have preferred to have been deployed to increase food produc-
tion in wartime, given that many farmers lacked his drive, confidence,
intelligence, and skill. He does commend the Committees for their com-
mitment to advance good practice through demonstration and advice, and
shows obvious delight that his farm is cited in the CWAEC’s monthly
“Farm Notes” as an example of good practice:

Some striking comparisons were made with the Agricultural Returns

for Oxfordshire; showing that, although the percentage of arable to
160   Michael Winter
grass has always been higher than that for the whole county, the farm
can carry three times the cattle, four times the breeding ewes, ten
times the pigs, and twenty-­five times the poultry for the acreage com-
pared with the pre-­war figures compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture
for the county.
(The Farming Ladder, 161)

But, on the whole, he appears perplexed and outraged, in war-­time and in

peace, as to why others cannot or will not emulate his example:

I am inclined to think that any measure of success I achieved, a town-­

bred boy, with no special ability, capital, friends or influence in the
industry, is simply due to the fact that I had to try so much harder; the
effort became habitual and so I have gone steadily on, while others
with every advantage showered upon them have just drifted along
expecting someone else to do the hard work, and the National
Farmers’ Union to do their thinking for them.
(The Farming Ladder, Postscript to 1955 edition, 218)

Good character, good habits, and industry, are impregnable to all the ill
luck this world ever dreamed of, proof against every misfortune, includ-
ing, I believe, legalized robbery by a state that caters for the lazy, the
selfish and the idle and penalizes the efficient, thrifty and industrious.
(The Farming Ladder, Postscript to 1955 edition, p. 219)

Thus, his outlook is primarily built around a strong political morality of

self-­reliance. He is clearly on the liberal right politically, in terms of his
antipathy to the state and of interventionist policy, but his disdain for priv-
ilege means he is no natural Conservative either. He introduced a profit-­
sharing scheme for the succession of farm pupils or apprentices that
worked on the farm. Again principles of self-­reliance and moral merit are
of great significance:

Individual merit is the only consideration. With sufficient money

anyone can boast that he was educated at Eton and Baliol; only a boy
of character and ability can say he learned his farming at Oathill.
(The Farming Ladder, 113)

His disdain for the dominant consensus about a state-­supported agri-

culture is nowhere more powerfully put than in this section where he both
lambasts the National Farmers’ Union and applauds the opportunities
offered by depression:

Is it to be wondered at that we have never joined a union that con-

tends that “world conditions are such that farming in this country
 Farming tales   161
cannot be self-­supporting, and the policy of protection and subsidies
has not been in operation long enough to bring about improvement
in methods of weaker farmers”? … Much has been written about
depression in agriculture and that it must be avoided at all costs in the
future, but few realize that it is the depressions that give the weaker
farmers, such as ourselves, the opportunity to get a start. Slumps elim-
inate the lazy, inefficient, and sport-­loving farmer, together with the
man who wants to devote his time to politics and local government,
giving a heaven-­sent opportunity to the man from the poorer and
harder districts of the north and west to take the better land in the
south and east of these islands. Also it is the opportunity of those of us
who were reared in the towns, but regard the land as our birthright,
and which we are prepared to earn in spite of every difficulty which
may be placed in our way.…. Ability to farm the land should be the
main qualification for holding it, and a man who can take a farm with
limited capital in a depression and make a success of it should not be
kept out, at the expense of the taxpayer, by a man whose sole quali-
fication is that his grandfather farmed it before him, and who is
unable to adapt his methods to the times.
(The Farming Ladder, 163–4)

The Farming Ladder remained in print for over thirty years into the late
1970s, and Farmer’s Progress was nearly as popular. Copies were to be found
in the libraries of farm institutes, agricultural colleges, and universities,
and the books were read by numerous aspiring farmers, farm advisors, and
the like. It cannot have failed to have influenced the thinking of many,
and yet so many of its fundamental premises were at odds with the cor-
poratist agricultural settlement, championed by the NFU, that had
emerged as the seemingly undisputed answer to the UK’s food security
(Cox et al. 1986, 1991).

Reynolds: the “sceptical” working farmer

I now turn to Clifton Reynolds. Reynolds wrote a volume a year for four
years during the war, as he embarked, by his own account a complete
novice, upon a farming adventure (Reynolds 1943, 1943, 1944, 1945; and
his biography of 1947). He provides vivid accounts of the trials and tribula-
tions of taking to farming for the first time during the Second World War.
He develops an account that is highly critical of many of the practitioners
of farming – farmers, workers, and indeed commentators such as A. G.
Street and Henderson – and candid about his own failings and difficulties.
An engineer by profession, he laments the lack of scientific knowledge
and the application of its principles in the agricultural industry. Farming a
small tenanted farm of 100 acres, he deplores what he considers the lack
of scale economy and efficiency inherent in small farming.
162   Michael Winter
He occupied what now seems a highly contradictory position. A success-
ful entrepreneur – when he embarked on farming he seemed as deter-
mined to make money from his pen as from the land – he also believed in
land nationalisation and a centrally planned socialist economy, having
visited Soviet Russia in the 1930s:

Many people have expressed surprise that I, an apparently successful

business man, should write the kind of stuff I do about our social and
economic system. I have tried to explain that I do so because I have a
higher regard for the truth than for self-­interest: that I refuse to be a
victim of a system I despise.
(Autobiography, 117)

Although I have played as successfully as most of my critics at the game

of Individual Enterprise, I hate it, … I am prepared to devote the rest
of my life to preaching against it.
(Reynolds, 1945: 37)

I inflict all this upon you because I foresee that by the time this book
gets published you will almost be deafened by bleatings about the
virtues of individual enterprise. An excellent exponent of it amongst
farmers is Mr. George Henderson.…. It might be taken as a Liberal
Party tract.…
(Reynolds, 1945: 93)

But Reynolds had one thing in common with Henderson, his disdain for
the NFU:

no one, including myself, seemed to regard the N.F.U. as a body

capable or desirous of facing the great questions affecting the future
of farming with determination or fire. It may be that I am prejudiced
in favour of the view that any action of real worth must and will come
from the workers. The officers of the N.F.U. were, on the whole, the
more prosperous farmers; men who could spare the time.
(Reynolds, 1944: 114)

Although critical of small farming, Reynolds takes credit where he seems

to have made progress and had success in his undertakings, but often
falls back to his underlying critique of the system when things don’t go
well. At times, Reynolds seems to be on a perverse mission to demon-
strate the folly of private farming through his own experiences of the
operation of the market, hardly a free one, it should be added, given the
level of state involvement in war-­time agriculture. This is certainly picked
up by A. G. Street, who describes the third year book in the Farmer’s
Weekly as:
 Farming tales   163
a complete manual of how not to do everything connected with British
farming, and such an exposure of the ineptitude of the townsman
when confronted with the real problems of the countryside. No farmer
… could have been so cruel as to depict even a fictional townsman
beginner as such a hopeless incompetent at farming …. the book is a
long tale of truly pathetic foolishness.
(Quoted in Reynolds, 1945: 94–5)

These are harsh words indeed, and Reynolds responds robustly. It is hard
to avoid the conclusion that Street, a conservative and traditionalist voice,
was responding as much to Reynolds’ subversive politics as to his actual
farming experiences. Street was mounting a spirited defence of conven-
tional agriculture and conventional agricultural politics.

Donaldson: the “intellectual” working farmer

Frances Donaldson (née Lonsdale, born 1907) could not be further
removed from Henderson in terms of background and subsequent career,
although they had one thing in common in that both came to farming
from a non-­farming background. Donaldson was an intellectual who cut
her writing teeth in books about her war-­time farming, but is now far
better known for biographies of P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh (both of
whom she knew personally), and Edward VIII (Donaldson 1967, 1974,
1982). She was from a cultured literary background, which did not suggest
in any way the likelihood of farming as a profession. Her father, (Lionel)
Frederick Lonsdale (1881–1954), was a playwright. Her second husband, a
left-­wing intellectual and social worker when they married in 1935, later
became a Labour cabinet minister, and subsequently received a peerage.
He was also, in the words of Michael De-­la-Noy (2004), a “dilettante
Gloucestershire farmer”, with the farm prospering “when the Second
World War intervened and Jack Donaldson was called up, his wife so
taking to agricultural life that in 1941 she achieved her real ambition to be
a writer by producing her first book, Approach to Farming”. However, the
impression given here by De-­la-Noy – that Jack was farming before his mar-
riage to Frances and that his absence in the war gave Frances her chance
to flourish in this occupation – is not borne out in any way by her own
account either in her autobiography (Donaldson 1992) or in Approach to
Farming (Donaldson 1941). Nor is there any evidence in his own obituary
(Dalyell 1998) that Jack was the original farmer. In any case, Gipsy Hill
Farm was in Warwickshire, near Stratford-­upon-Avon, and the Donaldsons’
Gloucestershire farm was their second farm and not purchased until 1947.
Approach to Farming went into six editions in as many years, and was fol-
lowed by three more farming books, Four Years Harvest (1945), Milk
Without Tears (1955), dismissively characterised by De-­la-Noy as “hardly
titles to tempt the literati”, and the jointly authored Farming in Britain
164   Michael Winter
Today (Donaldson et al. 1969). As practical accounts of starting out in agri-
culture they contain much in common with Henderson and Reynolds –
dealing with tackling practical farm work, the labour “problem”, the flows
of the seasons, the trials of the weather. Also like Henderson and Rey-
nolds, Donaldson takes the opportunity to spell out her thinking about
agriculture in political terms, in her case in the context of thinking about
the future as the war came to an end. She looks for an agricultural indus-
try to deliver social justice – a better life for farmers and farm workers and
better food for consumers, and she sees the state as having a key role
to play:

If the people of England are to be properly fed, not merely on a suffi-

ciency of food but on high quality food cheaply produced, the farmers
of England must have time not only to administer but also occasionally
to take a holiday. And what does this all mean? It means electric light
and water laid on, it means a decent standard of housing for both the
farmer and his men, it means roads, it means schools, it means skill. It
means equipment worthy of a great undertaking, it means a reasonable
remuneration for every job properly done, it means an utterly different
conception of an efficient standard of living. In one word it means
capital. And from where is all this capital to come? I can only conceive
of one answer – the state. And if the state is to supply it, then, it follows
… that we must nationalize the land.
(Four Years Harvest, 113)

But unlike Reynolds, Donaldson’s arguments are not to do with collectivi-

sation and state-­run enterprise. Rather the state would become the land-
owner and all farmers would be tenants of the state. Adequate investment
would be made by the landlord to encourage profitable private farm enter-
prises to ensure adequate food supplies for an urban nation. This is, in
broad principles, the social welfarism that came to prominence in the
post-­war period, but with the necessary investment coming not from the
state as landowner but as provider of grants and subsidies.

Conclusions
The three farming writers explored in this chapter demonstrate that the
voices of agriculture were by no means united in their views. In 1996, I
wrote of a “firm and coherent policy community, capable of defending
and promoting the interests of farmers” (Winter 1996: 102). I identified
the factors that brought about this coherence based on a mutuality of
interests in post-­war Britain. The farming industry was

seen to be of key importance by civil servants because of food short-

ages and the industry’s importance for overall economic performance;
 Farming tales   165
to politicians because electoral prospects were so dependent on eco-
nomic and food security factors; and to the key interest groups
because of their livelihoods.
(Ibid.: 102)

As I have explored divergent farming voices in subsequent years, I have

come to realise that the emergence of key interest groups representing
farmers does not mean that all farming voices are as one. The post-­war
agricultural settlement was indeed based on some powerful dominant
cultural and political forces which consequently shaped subsequent
historical accounts. But it is not the whole picture. Of the three writers
explored here, Henderson and Reynolds espoused visions of agriculture
that were radically at odds with the dominant view and with each other.
Donaldson is closer to the mainstream which, given her close connec-
tions with parts of the British political establishment, is perhaps not sur-
prising. But even Donaldson can ring surprises such as in her support
for land nationalisation.
Politically the election in 1945 of a Labour government committed to
policy intervention and state planning across economy and society as a
whole ensured there would be no repeat of the “great betrayal”. Neither
the radical free market voice of Henderson nor the land nationalisation
advocacy of Reynolds and Donaldson found much support once cor-
poratism had closed down options and electoral politics had set in
motion a legislative programme that ultimately transitioned to member-
ship of the European Union and the Common Agricultural Policy. It is
doubtful that Henderson or Reynolds would have had much confidence
in either, Donaldson possibly more so. Few can doubt that the post-­war
decades proved to be highly successful in protecting the food security of
the British people. There are of course numerous questions that could
be raised about the sustainability of the agriculture that emerged and
the nutritional quality of mass produced food, but in terms of the crude
provision of calories it was a success story based on price support pol-
icies and the application of science and technology. But could the
alternative visions provided by Henderson, Donaldson, or Reynolds have
led to similar or “better” outcomes? Counterfactuals present notorious
challenges to historians. One thing is clear, though; powerful political
forces mean that Henderson and Reynolds were side-­lined as political
voices even though their books were widely read. The last edition of The
Farming Ladder was published as late as 1978 after thirty years of highly
interventionist policies that inflated land values and made farming ever
more of a closed shop, the precise opposite of what Henderson would
have wished. Despite the seeming consensus on agriculture during this
period, might it be that Henderson’s free market vision did have an
impact in the collective psyche of the farming community, and might
this have influenced many farmers to vote for a likely radical reform to
166   Michael Winter
agricultural support policy by voting Brexit in 2016? An impossible ques-
tion to answer, but the identification of competing food security policy
narratives in this chapter at least suggests it is a possibility. As farmers
will often remind non-­farmers, farming is a long-­term business and long
shadows are cast by land management practices, farm business decisions,
and cultural mores over many, many years.
9 The economy of hunger
Representing the Bengal
famine of 1943
Amlan Das Gupta

The Famine of 1943 is imprinted in the Bengali memory in a way that no

other natural catastrophe is. Those who actually witnessed the event are
today a dwindling lot, but in many cases their childhood memory of dis-
aster is still clear. Many of their anecdotes form part of family lore: at least
for the following generation they are familiar and often repeated, as also
are, for instance, accounts of the trauma of the Partition of Bengal (1947)
and the Great Bengal Killings of 1946. More to the point, however, is the
fact that the famine was written permanently into popular consciousness
by the powerful cultural productions of the time. These range from fiction
and drama to woodcuts, drawings, and photographs. Even a list of the
most important writers and artists who responded to the famine would run
into scores, and their works into many hundreds. It needs to be emphas-
ized that these works are still very much in circulation; some of the literary
works, in which we are here primarily interested, form part of everyday
reading habits, such as they still exist.1
The 1940s in Bengal was a time of vigorous literary production, with both
established writers at the height of their powers and a new generation of
artists making their mark. Saratchandra Chattopadhyay died in 1938 and
Rabindranath Tagore in 1941, between them having taken Bengali fiction
to new heights of distinction. But some of their younger contemporaries
remained active through the troubled period of the 1940s – a decade which
maps, at a national level, the Quit India Movement of 1942 and Indian Inde-
pendence in 1947, and in Bengal particularly, a number of traumatic events
culminating in the large-­scale confusion of Partition and mass migration.2
For at least two more decades, Bengali fiction shows remarkable resilience
and power in representing historical events that engender extremes of
despair and hope. Fuelled alike by socialist ideas and nationalist dreams –
often in curious conjunction – this body of fiction reinforced individual
memories of loss and horror. Nevertheless, literary representation, even in
the idioms of realist fiction, remains indirect and aspirational, and therefore
not to be thought of as a surrogate for the recounting of historical fact.
What it does do, and very powerfully so, is to shape our ethical responses,
even after two generations.
168   Amlan Das Gupta
For individuals of my generation, the understanding of the Bengal
famine itself is shaped by its powerful artistic representations. One thinks
of the photographs of Sunil Janah, who as a student accompanied the
Communist leader P. C. Joshi in his travels through the ravaged villages of
Bengal, or the ink drawings of Chittaprosad which miraculously survived
the British censor, or the woodcuts of Zainul Abedin.3 Searing in their
anger and compassion, these images complement the fictional accounts of
famine and disaster. I would like in this chapter to briefly consider the
problems of representing famine, devoting attention to a short story by
Manik Bandyopadhyay (1908–56) and a novel by Bibhutibhushan
Bandyopadhyay (1894–1950), Ashani Sanket (1944). The selected texts are
among the finest literary productions of the time, but clearly they form a
small sample for judging a large body of evidence. Yet, the cultural pro-
ductions speak in a relatively unified manner, in the way they understand
the causes of the calamity, attribute responsibility, and document its
human impact. There are few mentions of crop-­failure or blight, and the
overwhelming sense is that the famine was “man-­made”. The disappear-
ance of rice, and then all other items of daily consumption, was due to
government policy and hoarding: we repeatedly come across descriptions
of the vast stocks hidden away in warehouses and granaries. Popular anger
was further fuelled by the disastrous colonial policies of rice removal and
boat denial.4 There was thus a breakdown in traditional systems of entitle-
ment, particularly in villages. In the summer of 1943, the Bengali journal
Prabasi angrily noted:

The intervention of the government has caused confusion and corrup-

tion in every aspect of business and trade in the country; the people
have not been benefited at all, profits have been made only by grasp-
ing traders and a section of government employees.
(“Ek shata koti tākār khādyashasya kroy” in “Bibidha Prasanga”, Prabāsi,
Calcutta, Jyaistha 1350/May–June 1943: 153)

The famine of 1942–43 (known as “Ponchasher Monnontor”5), and succeed-

ing famine-­related diseases, resulted in some 3 million deaths.6 The famine
was principally a rural phenomenon, spread over the length and breadth
of undivided Bengal. Nearly every district suffered (Sen, 1981b: 441, citing
the Census of 1951), and those who survived suffered enormous economic
hardship and loss of social status, having had to sell land, livestock, uten-
sils, tools, and agricultural implements and ornaments. The rise particu-
larly in urban destitution, with large armies of rural poor moving into
cities like Kolkata and Dhaka, was very marked. M. M. Islam writes:

Contemporary non-­official observers were almost unanimously of the

view that the famine was “man-­made”, no natural factors such as
drought or flood caused such a shortage of rice as to make large-­scale
 The economy of hunger   169
starvation and death inevitable. As the Calcutta daily, The Statesman,
put it, “This sickening catastrophe is man-­made. We say with delibera-
tion that the present Bengal famine constitutes the worst and most
reprehensible administrative breakdown in India since the political
disorders of 1930–31.”
(Islam, 2007: 422, citing The Statesman, 23 September 1943)

One fact that needs to be noted is that famine conditions seem to have
been limited to Bengal and its environs, not the whole of India. Yet the
surplus stocks from major producing regions like the Punjab did not reach
Bengal, reportedly because of the complicity of traders, politicians, and
government officials.7
In an article in The Hindu (13 February 2013), written on the eve of the
passing of the National Food Security Act by the Indian Parliament, the
eminent agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan looked back at his deci-
sion to abandon medical studies and become a soil scientist. The most
powerful forces behind his decision, he pointed out, were the Quit India
call by Gandhiji and the photographs of dying multitudes in Bengal:

I am narrating this event in a crucial stage in my life only to point out

the life-­changing impact the Bengal Famine and Gandhiji’s vision of a
hunger free India had on young minds. Looking back, I am glad I
made this change and also that I am living today when a historic trans-
ition from the Bengal Famine to Right to Food with home grown food
is taking place.

Swaminathan recounted the reasons behind the calamity succinctly and

with scientific dispassion:

A constellation of factors led to this megatragedy, such as the Japanese

occupation of Burma, the damage to the aman (kharif ) rice crop both
due to tidal waves and a disease epidemic caused by the fungus
Helminthosporium oryzae, panic purchase and hoarding by the rich,
failure of governance, particularly in relation to the equitable distribu-
tion of the available food grains, disruption of communication due to
World War II, and the indifference of the then U.K. government to
the plight of the starving people of undivided Bengal.

Swaminathan avoided taking sides in the most prominent of academic

debates that have been conducted on the Bengal famine, associated with
the work of Amartya Sen. Sen’s argument was that “The traditional
approach to famines looks for a decline in food availability.… However, star-
vation is a matter of some people not having enough food to eat, and not a
matter of there being not enough food to eat” (1981b: 434). The argument
that the Bengal famine was caused by the breakdown of traditional systems
170   Amlan Das Gupta
of entitlement rather that of food supply per se has received a great deal of
critical attention and dissenting voices are many and varied. There is little to
be achieved by rehearsing those arguments here.8 What strikes me particu-
larly is a comment cited in a recent article by Islam: “What Professor Sen
has said about famine, was known to my grandmother.”9 Indeed, that may
be the reason why Sen’s description of the causes of famine has been similar
to the analyses of cultural commentators in Bengal, and largely fits with the
literary evidence available. That is neither to say that the literary evidence
can claim any measure of scientific “accuracy”, nor that Sen’s arguments are
in any way advanced or nullified by literary opinions. Dearth is a familiar
and recurrent trope in representations of agrarian economies: famine too is
hardly new, for as Swaminathan (2013) points out: “Famines were frequent
in colonial India and some estimates indicate that 30 to 40 million died out
of starvation in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Bengal during the latter half of the
19th century.” But it was not just the extent of the 1943 famine that made it
stand out. Images of skeletons in lush paddy fields, tales of hoarders secret-
ing away vast reserves of grain, of an inhuman colonial administration
burning standing crops, capsizing fishing boats, and seizing the regular
stocks of rice in agrarian households, and above all the sharp disparity
between the fates of city and country produced a discourse of an exceptional
breakdown.
Literary representations of the famine in Bengal render this breakdown
in profoundly moral terms, seeking to come to grips with its inmost work-
ings in human motivation and action. Much of it is factually accurate, and
based upon reported events. More relevantly, the fictional tales of suffer-
ing and destitution written in the years immediately following the famine
must be seen as a response to perceived reality. In a moving scene of Bijon
Bhattacharya’s play Nabanna (1944), human beings and street dogs fight
for the refuse of the rich from rubbish bins; a familiar theme in the lit-
erary representations of the famine is the arrival of starving multitudes in
Kolkata and Dhaka in the hope of casual charity. Oral accounts of urban
middle-­class witnesses inevitably recount the harrowing cries of the poor
for a spoonful of rice-­water; where they were able to get relief from food
camps, the fare seems to have been both inadequate and inedible. Health
stations, even when operated by dedicated doctors and nurses, struggled
with shortages of the most basic medicines. In a later scene in the same
play, set in a health camp, patients die like flies. The doctor, watching over
a dying patient, says in despair: “I know … he will die. He, and the whole
lot of them. The future [my emphasis] is being murdered, deliberately,
murdered by thieves and bunglers” (Bhattacharya, 2000: 105).10 At the
same time, the utter helplessness of the starving multitudes is underlined
in the scene in which the tout Haru Datta and the trader Kalidhan Dhara
traffic in destitute women by getting them to put their thumb impressions
on forged papers (85–9). The plan is ultimately foiled by the intervention
of the police, and Bhattacharya’s play ends with the return of the hungry
 The economy of hunger   171
villagers to their original homes with the hope that they will celebrate a
new harvest there. The play is something of an exception in the literature
of the time, offering hope for a more equitable future, but only after we
have seen extremes of human suffering, as well as a variety of responses to
it that range from utter indifference to active malice and brutality. Hoard-
ing, profiteering, and trafficking in women are common themes in the
literature of the times, vices found both in the city and in the villages. Yet
for all the play’s socialist fervour, Bhattacharya’s villagers are a law-­abiding
lot. The villains in the play are the black-­marketeers and dishonest busi-
nessmen, rather than the colonial government as such.
The reader may be minded here of a point powerfully made by Paul
Greenough through a contrast with the experience of European food
shortages and food riots. He writes:

In Europe the quasi-­legal notions of subsistence “rights” and the “just

price” gave legitimacy to food riots, a legitimacy sometimes conceded
by officials, who refused to punish enraged looters and leaders of
hungry crowds. … In Bengal such legal notions were absent; the
demands by starving dependents upon their destined providers were
purely moral and customary, and abandoned victims did little more
than to beg and dramatize their helplessness in the hope of stimu-
lating a flow of benevolence. Hence mendicancy, imploring gestures,
cries and wails; hence the passive confrontation of starving victims
with the well-­fed in front of “bulging” grain shops.
(1983: 847)11

The reference to “bulging grain shops” invokes the testimony of a British

medical officer who testified in front of the famine inquiry commission of
1944 that Bengalis died in front of “bulging food shops” because they
could not buy and because “it was due to the passive, fatalistic attitude of
those people that there were no riots and they were dying” (ibid.: 847).
Greenough’s analysis of the rupture of the “moral economy” of rural
Bengal has received much praise, and its main contentions have been
accepted by many scholars (for instance, reviews by Appadurai and Chaud-
huri, both 1984). Greenough takes issue with James Scott’s study of the
“moral economy” of the Asian peasant on several counts, but the question
of passivity is an important one. Scott argues that starving peasants, when
not restrained by force or law, will rise violently against their social super-
iors. This was clearly not the case in Bengal:

If state-­supplied relief subsequently fails, there is then a collapse of the

social bonds uniting landlords with tenants, parents with children, and
husbands with wives. Thus, in an advanced state of unrelieved famine,
landlords and heads of households coolly abandon their clients and
dependents, imposing suffering and starvation on the very persons
172   Amlan Das Gupta
who are ordinarily their wards. Yet these resource-­controlling and
decision-­making males do so without fear of resistance or retribution;
in fact they appear to obtain their victims’ acquiescence even as they
pursue their own self-­interest. Far from eliciting rage and violence,
famine abandonment in Bengal is accompanied by widespread “pas-
sivity” and “fatalism”, a fact that has always dismayed non-­Bengali
witnesses.
(Greenough, 1983: 832–3, citing James Scott,
The Moral Economy of the Asian Peasant, 1976)

In Bengal, states Greenough, peasants are unfamiliar with the simple ideas
of scarcity and subsistence, preferring to refer to the notion of Laksmi,
standing for prosperity or well-­being, which is realized when there is abun-
dance, and consequently the networks of mutual obligation that tie
together members of families – and families with the larger community –
are intact. Prosperity, he goes on to say, is expressed by the presence of
three related qualities “indulgence” (prasraya), “abundance” (raj-­laksmi),
and “good health” (sri). The Bengal famine, that paradigmatic moment of
absence of well-­being sees not violent peasant upsurges, but rather a wide-
spread breakdown in the ethic of care that normatively should be present:

Caught in these pincers of high prices and unemployment, a larger

and larger proportion of the rural population was driven to sell its
possessions, to foraging, and to beggary and theft. In a second, even
more terrible phase of abandonment, individual households began to
collapse, the male heads either driving off their dependents or leaving
them behind. Sales of children and the abuse of women and children
also occurred.
(Greenough, 1980: 234)

Given the widespread acceptance for Greenough’s arguments – by Indian

(including Bengali) and western scholars – a private sense of unease may
be wholly irrelevant. Neither would an attempt to provide counter-­
instances drawing upon scattered anecdotal knowledge be of much use in
countering the labours of a professional historian. In his recent counter-­
argument to the narrative of “passivity”, Janam Mukherjee recounts
hungers marches, and the looting of grocery and ration shops, and vehi-
cles transporting grain (2015: 12–13, 40–1). However, this evidence
appears to be drawn from an earlier stage of the crisis in 1942, before the
physical extremes of famine were fully felt. The evidence of “resistance” to
official attempts at providing relief and rounding up victims for shelters
and poorhouses, on the other hand, comes from reports dating from
October and November 1943, a later phase at the height of the crisis.
These reports suggest that victims were “resisting” capture by relief offi-
cials and “kept running away” (ibid.: 203). Such “disciplinary challenges”,
 The economy of hunger   173
as Mukherjee terms them, are described by one official as follows: “when
we used to come with police lorries, they used to get frightened, the
mother would run in one direction and the child in another”. The resist-
ance, once famine conditions had fully set in, thus appears to take the
form of fear and confusion about official intentions – which is rather
different from organized (or spontaneous) food riots. What one might
say, however, is that the assumption of a coherent set of values – and Gree-
nough is strong on this point – which characterizes the Bengal peasantry,
or even the entire agricultural class, seems counter-­intuitive. At the same
time, the claim that the Bengal peasantry was unlike their counterparts in
other parts of India and that their responses to famine were in some
unique way different, is also worth pondering. We might for a moment
consider the response of E. P. Thompson, the “original” propounder of
the idea of the “moral economy”:

But Greenough hangs his interpretive apparatus upon slender evid-

ence – a few accounts of the “banishment” of wives or desertion of
families – and alternative interpretations are not tested. And he
affirms his conclusions in increasingly confident form, as if they were
incontestible findings. What were “desperate” measures on one page
becomes, fifty pages later, the sweeping assertion that “authority
figures in peasant households abandoned numerous dependents
deemed inessential for the reconstitution of family and society in the
post-­crisis period”. What is found in extremity is now offered as if it
were the norm: “husbands and heads of families appropriated
domestic assets and abandoned their spouses, and parents sold chil-
dren for cash”. We must leave these questions to specialists in Bengali
culture.… But they strongly influence Greenough’s comparative find-
ings as to riot.
(1993: 345)12

The point about desperation is important: neither droughts nor floods nor
rapacious landlords and traders are unusual in Bengal, and scarcity is very
much a condition of being for the greater number of its inhabitants. The
exceptionality of the 1943 famine is what the literature of the period docu-
ments, and the question of moral agency is unlikely to have a simple
answer.
Let me then briefly consider two representations of the moral con-
sequences of famine in Bengali literature, not for their exemplary value,
but to propose that literature habitually suggests alternate ways of
response. The temporal closeness of the events to artists and audiences
alike might argue for a kind of mimetic force, even if fables – like Nabanna
– have ends that seem forced and propagandist. One should also point out
that representations of the human conduct in extreme crisis are extremely
varied, given the sheer bulk of literary famine narratives. The first text that
174   Amlan Das Gupta
.
I wish to briefly examine is Manik Bandyopadhyay’s short story “Chiniy e
.
khayni keno” (Why didn’t they snatch and eat?), first published in the 1947
volume of short stories, Khatiyan.13 In her detailed documentation of the
representations of the famine in Bengali literature, Binata Roychowdhury
observes that of all contemporary writers, Manik Bandyopadhyay com-
posed the greatest number of stories on the famine (1993: 55). The
present tale recounts a conversation between an unnamed narrator, and
Jogi, who has the fearsome reputation of having been a brigand in the
idealized traditional mode: he robbed the rich and fed the poor. Even
during the famine, he looted food to distribute to the hungry, and into
the bargain, saved several women from being sold into prostitution. He is
certainly not the docile Bengali peasant, mutely suffering extreme depriva-
tion. He has only recently been released after serving a prison sentence
for robbing a government supply boat.
Supriya Chaudhuri examines this story in the context of her study of
the moral economy of wellbeing, and finds in it a peculiar mimetic
anxiety:

The harsh, sometimes polemical realism of these stories can be seen

to evidence a kind of representational anxiety, a response, I would
suggest, to the pressure of a real event that exceeds fictional under-
standing or adequacy. “Chhiniye khayni keno?” pushes this struggle
for representational common sense, as we might describe it, to the
edge of a question that is put to history: why do people starve if there
is food before them? The 1943 famine is above all the event that has
raised this question, asked at the time by western observers as well as
somewhat distanced Indians, and repeated subsequently by sociolo-
gists, economists and historians trying to come to terms with the
cruelty of the contradiction that history has so faithfully recorded:
food in the warehouses, deaths on the streets.
(2014: 113)14

Chaudhuri concludes:

Beyond that liminal point where the body crosses into the exhaustion
and physical depletion of hunger, the body is its own food, hunger
consumes it like an other, and in so doing it estranges and alienates
the self, so that it appears to have no worldly recourse.
(Ibid.)

I have chosen to revisit this tale because of the way it formulates and
answers the issue of passivity: “Not one, not ten, but hundreds and thou-
sands and millions of them went under … yet they didn’t move an arm to
snatch and eat their food, to grab it” (204). Jogi’s tone is ironic, and at
times openly derisive of the middle-­class intellectualism of his interlocutor.
 The economy of hunger   175
The city bābus (urban Bengali gentlemen and intellectuals) shouted them-
selves hoarse about the “food” crisis. For the poor, it was not a question of
food in the abstract, its many refined varieties, but of rice; for if there had
been the coarsest, maggot-­ridden grain, even then people would have
lived, hung on to life somehow. There are wild roots, plants, and leaves in
the forest: all they needed was a little rice. Jogi is a privileged speaker, for
two different reasons. First, he is a witness in the double sense that Giorgio
Agamben uses the term of the survivors of the Holocaust, both testis and
superstes, witness and survivor (1999: 17); second, as a brigand and organ-
izer of revolt, he claims a distinct kind of agency, one that sets him apart
from his suffering fellows. There is thus a fierce pride in his claim that he,
and only he, can truly say why there was no violence, no forcible seizure of
food: “Now I – I know why they didn’t snatch – I alone do. No one else has
a clue” (206).
Jogi provides in fact a mocking commentary on urban middle-­class
responses to this question, “all nonsense, just so much hot air” (206). Jogi
reports to his companion both the opinions of the “bābus” and his own
angry rejoinders. One lot say, these are poor and inoffensive farmers, they
can’t even dream of looting and robbing. Jogi’s response is appropriately
mordant. Who thinks of the law, he says, in the face of death? They would
sell their wives and daughters, they would strangle a dying sharer, just to
have that much more for themselves. To be arrested is to be saved, for at
least there is food in the prisons. Another bābu tells him that ordinary
people believe in fate, and accept it unquestioningly. But Jogi asks: Don’t
people seek recourse against snake-­bite? Don’t they take precautions
against floods and try to save themselves from fire? So why wouldn’t they
at least try to save themselves by seizing the food in front of them? The
narrator feels a little uncomfortable at this vein of mockery: “I know what
such people say, Jogi. What about you?” (206) But Jogi is relentless. The
third opinion, voiced by a bābu whose heart bleeds for the poor, attributes
the docility of the peasants to their age-­old habit of living with dearth.
They were used to not eating when there was no rice to be had. Jogi’s
response is appropriately savage: “So I told him, sir, they may have been
used to starving, were they also used to dying?” (107).
Jogi comes to the relief camp in the city as an outsider, having failed
earlier in his attempt to get together a gang to loot food rather than
money and ornaments. He dresses in rags, even though he clearly looks
better fed than the others. Some try to chase him away, others flatter him
for possible advantage. Jogi witnesses the condition of the relief-­seekers,
and true to his recalcitrant nature tries to instill in them a rebellious spirit.
“I go around telling everybody, why don’t you snatch and eat? … We are
dying anyway, so let us die fighting” (210). Most of the supplies sent for
the relief kitchen disappear into the hands of the hoarders. But his incite-
ment appears to have little effect. The starving lot, feeding on miniscule
helpings of a watery concoction of rice and lentils, pays little heed to what
176   Amlan Das Gupta
he says, not because they do not want to but because they simply can’t.
They nod off, and in between ask him to repeat what he was saying. Only
some, after consuming the degrading fare doled out, are stirred into a
show of temper, but by evening it has all died again and all they are able
to do is to feebly jostle for a place in the queue.
Jogi arranges by contacting his earlier criminal associates to have a full
shipment of food sent to the camp. This seems to work wonders. The food
improves dramatically, the gruel is nice and thick, there is a potato per
head in the bargain:

(176)
. . .
[ār et.ai āsal kathā man diy e śonen bābu. chiniye khey e bāñcbār kathā jārā
.
keu kāne tole ni, duto din du-­belā ek mog dāl ār ektu kore āluseddha kheye
. .
sakale kān pete śunte lāgla āmār kathā, sāy diy e bolte lāgla je ei t.hik, e char.a
.
bāñcbār upay nei.]

And then, sir, comes the most important part of my story, so listen
carefully. The same people who had paid no heed when I told them to
come and loot now grew attentive to my words, now that they were
getting two square meals … for the last couple of days. They started
agreeing that what I said was true, that there was no other way
but this.
(211)

They were ready to loot and plunder; they would take over the camp them-
selves and cook their own rations; even the children were oozing bravado.
Jogi takes upon himself the task of training this rag-­tag lot the art of
professional brigandage with the same care that had taught his bandit
crew. He settles on Baikuntha Saha’s warehouse as the target of his attack,
and spends a couple of days surveying the spot. When he gets back, he
finds to his shock that food has run out, the old ration of thin gruel
resumed. The very people who had sworn violent deeds are back in their
state of inaction: “Hooked on to the thought of their watery pish-­pash
once again they were. Lost the power of thinking of anything else” (211).
This then is the core of Jogi’s answer to the question that he formulates
himself: “Why didn’t they snatch and eat?” The question apparently exer-
cised nationalist leaders as well. Malini Bhattacharya observes that Jawahar-
lal Nehru is supposed to have asked the same question (headnote, 203).
The answer that Jogi finds is based on the nature of hunger itself: in a
state of radical privation, hunger inhibits its own redress.
 The economy of hunger   177

(177)
.
[sedin bujhlām bābu keno eto lok nā-kheye morche, eto khābār hāter kāche
. . .
thākte chiniye khāyni keno. ek din khete nā pele śorirt.a śudhu śukāy nā, lar.āi
. . . .
kore chiniye kheye bẽce thākār tāgid-o jhimiye jāy . du-­cār din ektu kichu khete
. . .
pele setā pher māthācār.ā diye ot.he. dudin khete nā pele pher jhimiye jāy. ta ete
aścorjo ki. eto sahaj sojā kathā.]

So then I knew, sir, why people starve to death, why they never snatch
and eat even with food within their reach. When one goes without a
meal, it is not just the body that gets dried up, the urge to fight for life
and grab food goes down too. Then you get something to eat once
more, and the urge is back. Then you starve for a couple of days, it
goes down again. No wonder. It’s all quite simple really.
(212)

Jogi’s answer is based on that most unavoidable of constraints: the body

itself. One must also realize that this is not a passage from prosperity to
misery either: just that tipping of the scales between life and death. As
Manik Bandyopadhyay’s writings so eloquently testify, the condition of
the marginal peasant in Bengal, Hindu or Muslim, is habitually attended
by conditions of dearth. The 1943 famine then is understood in terms
of its exceptionality; a people inured to the vagaries of flood and
drought, of rapacious landlords and grasping money-­lenders, of a
callous and brutal colonial government, now experience a situation that
renders the “implicit rules of crisis conduct” irrelevant. In its inhabita-
tion of the condition of mere life the body become unresponsive to
moral calculation.
That may also be the point of the ending of the story. Jogi’s wife is
visibly pregnant, and the narrator remembers that he has been released
from prison only three or four months ago. Jogi answers the unspoken
question that hangs in the air, by retelling a tale from the Mahabharata: of
the sage Jaratkaru who, realizing his duty to bear a child for the perpetu-
ation of his family, touches the womb of his wife, before departing for the
forest, saying only asti, “it is there”. In Jogi’s cryptic retelling the sage has
been worn out with asceticism and the union has no fruit: when he chides
his wife about her childlessness, she berates him about his penances and
tells him it takes strength to father a child. The sage, suitably penitent,
feasts for a year on butter and cream, and only then is able to fulfil his
conjugal duties. Walking back with Jogi to the railway station, the narrator
178   Amlan Das Gupta
wonders whether his companion knows that is biologically impossible for
him to be the father. But then he realizes:

(178)
. . . .
[āje-bāje khey āle – jesob khey āl tāderi mānāy, tāderi fyaśān, jārā chiniy e khey e
.
bāñcār prabrittit.a parjanta kẽce diy e mārte pāre lākhe-lākhe mā-bāp chele-­meye
.
– anārthak akhuśi hote rāji noy mānush.]

Who would bother to grumble about silly fancies, fancies that suit only
those who can kill off billions of mothers, fathers and children simply
by crushing their instinct to snatch food and live?
(214)

The backdrop of famine narratives, recorded and fictional, is frequently

constituted by the multitude, the mass of “living skeletons” that Jogi
describes, unnamed and unnameable. Human action in their case is
reduced to a feeble scratching for a crust of bread, or finding a place in
the queues outside the relief kitchens. Literary representations of the
famine are marked on the one hand by the extinction of ethical calcu-
lation, a recognition of the most fearsome force of necessity, founded
neither on cosmology or character, but on the human body itself. On the
other hand, literary representations do foreground the question of agency:
whether the outcomes are understood in terms of courage or of cow-
ardice, of self-­sacrifice or of self-­preservation, they habitually challenge our
moral responses, rather than ascribe praise and blame. It may be worth
noting that the Bengal famine appears to place upon its witnesses and sur-
vivors the duty of representation, and thereby intervention in the debates
it generated, clearly different from the responses to the Holocaust, to
which it has been sometimes compared.15 The character of Jogi is dramat-
ized by Bandopadhyay as both narrator and agent who actively intervenes
in the events of the famine as well as their interpretation.
I will conclude by briefly considering Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s
novel Ashani Sanket (1944). I have chosen it not only because it is, through
Satyajit Ray’s celebrated film version,16 relatively familiar outside Bengali
speaking audiences. It marks something of a departure from the author’s
representational style, for he appears to have been unresponsive to polit-
ical issues in the previous decade, claiming that the artist’s role was to
examine the “deeper realms” of aesthetic truth. Like most of his fellows,
the famine of 1943 appears to impose on him the duty of response. Celeb-
rated for his lyrical representations of rural Bengal, Bibhutibhushan
chooses to chart the change from relative well-­being to utter disaster
 The economy of hunger   179
instead of immediately plunging us into the world of starving multitudes.
The novel ends with one death, and one death only; but in its prophecy of
disaster, it remains one of the most powerful works of its time.17
The plot of Ashani Sanket has to do with the changing fortunes of a
Brahmin family in rural Bengal. The central character is Gangacharan
Chakravarty who has recently set up home in the prosperous and fertile
Natun Gan (“new village”) with his wife Ananga and his two young sons.
Theirs is the only Brahmin family in a community inhabited by agricul-
tural labourers; Gangacharan is held in high esteem and the first section
of the novel describes his growing success as teacher, physician, and priest.
Gangacharan is shown to be a man of a somewhat unsettled disposition,
who has come away from his ancestral home because of family disputes
and has been unable to prosper in other villages where he has tried his
luck. The humble village suits him well as his authority here is unques-
tioned; it is easier for him to impress the village folk with the evidence of
his wisdom and power. He is not averse to using both common sense and
mild trickery to bolster his reputation. His willingness to take up the task
of administering religious rites to the lowly Kapali villagers is, as his wife
anxiously thinks, fraught with danger, for consorting with Shudras might
invite high-­caste censure. Gangacharan looks at it from a pragmatic view-
point: “Who’ll be the wiser? Who do you think is going to find out?” The
villagers in return bring him gifts of the choicest vegetables, fish, and oil,
and Ananga’s pride in her husband’s authority knows no bounds.
By chance more than design, Gangacharan’s religious and medical min-
istrations seem to succeed, and his reputation grows daily. But the first
intimation of disaster comes without warning and has little impact. Ganga-
charan goes to the neighbouring village of Kamdebpur to perform purifi-
catory rituals after an attack of cholera, and there he hears that the rice is
selling at higher rates than usual. Nobody believes that rice can sell at two
rupees a maund, and the conversation turns to other things. But on the
way back, Gangacharan meets a Brahmin acquaintance who tells him that
he is starving: “I’m dying of hunger. There isn’t a grain of rice at home.
Prices are rising like anything – it was four and half rupees just then and
now it’s six” (83). Gangacharan is mildly worried and comes to under-
stand that all this is happening because of the War. News comes of the fall
of Singapore, a place that he has never heard of. The anxious villagers
debate whether it is near Jessore or Khulna or Puri, a conversation in
which Gangacharan remains superior and non-­committal.
Like most narratives of the time, the question of sustenance in Ashani
Sanket is founded on the trope of rice, its presence and absence. A multitude
of wrong decisions leads up to the crisis. At one level it shows greed and
short-­sightedness. Farmers sell their produce, trying to cash in on the
increasing prices, the warehouse owner Khan Saheb sells his stock to govern-
ment contractors for profit. Biswas, the trader, tries to smuggle his rice out
of the village, and finally abandons the village altogether. Gangacharan’s
180   Amlan Das Gupta
prestige and social standing ensure that he is still able to buy rice when
others cannot, but within weeks he finds that there is simply nothing to be
had. Few accounts of the famine year match Ashani Sanket in conveying
the immediacy and relentlessness of the spread of panic in the rural areas
of Bengal. Equally shocking is the speed of the breakdown. The progress
of the novel is measured in days and weeks, each stage marking new
depths in suffering. This is comparable to the pattern of narration, in tra-
ditional Mughal chronicles, of famine horrors (see Chapter 4). However,
the modern Bengali novel form allows its author to emphasize and recon-
struct what the past imperial chronicles could elide – a precise teleology
or progress of human suffering and degradation of values during par-
ticular famines.
The price of rice continues to rise unabated: from six to ten and then
to twenty, thirty, forty and finally up to sixty or sixty-­five rupees a maund.
Looting breaks out in the rural markets, traders hide their stocks, hordes
of starving people roam the countryside. Other foodstuffs also dis-
appear; the villagers eat boiled gram and pulses, then yams and wild
vegetables from the forest, and at the end are reduced to eating leaves
and roots. Hordes of people forage in the ponds for snails and clams,
while the children cry on the banks. “So many died eating these.” Gan-
gacharan discovers that there is simply no rice to be had, even for ready
money. The inevitable pressure on social values is mapped tellingly in
the relationship that develops between the young Kapali housewife and
the grasping contractor Jadu Pora. She tells Ananga: “I can’t bear it any
more – if I die of hunger, what’s the use of anything? I don’t care – let
me go, it’s better for me to sin and rot in hell.” Ananga, used to a life of
ease and privilege, is reduced to labouring in the Kapali households,
and while Gangacharan is racked with helpless shame, he does not
refuse a meal at the house of a parishioner even while his own children
starve.
The final turn of the story is the death of Moti, a woman from the
lowest of castes, that of leather workers (muci). She is an old associate
and companion of Ananga, and her appearances in the story map the
gradual worsening of the situation. When we first see her she is happy
and vivacious: in her subsequent visits to Ananga’s house, her condition
progressively deteriorates, her changing perceptions of her wasting body
serving in the novel as the site of the famine’s depredation. Her death
causes a shift in perception among the villagers, who now understand
that the accustomed habits of dearth and lack have been changed
utterly.
 The economy of hunger   181

(Repr. 2014: 149)

. .
[grāme thākā khub muśkil hoy e por.lo Moti Mucinīr mrityu hoy ār par.
anāhāre mrityu ei pratham, er āge keu jānta nā bā biśwās kare ni je anāhāre
ābār mānush morte pāre. Eto phal thākte gāche gāche, nadir jale eto māch
thākte, biśesh kore eto lok jekhāne bāsh kore grāme o pāsher grāme, takhon
.
mānush kakhono nā khey e mare? … kintu Moti Mucinīr byapāre sakolei
.
bujhlo, nā kheye mānushe tāhole to morte pāre. etodin jā golpe-­kāhinite shonā
jeto, āj tā sambhaber gandir modhye ese poũche gelo. koi ei je ektā lok mārā
.
gelo nā kheye, keu to tāke khete dile nā? sakoler mone bisham ektā āśangkār
.
srishti holo. sabāi to tāhole nā kheye morte pāre!]

It became difficult to live in the village after Moti Muchini’s death.

This was the first death from starvation, before this nobody knew or
believed that people could die of hunger. So many fruits in the trees,
so much fish in the river, above all so many people in this village and
the next – how could anyone die of starvation? … But after Moti
Muchini’s death everybody understood that people could die of
hunger. What was the stuff of fiction now became part of plausible
reality. A person dies from lack of food – nobody came to help her!
Nobody could feed and save her from death! People were gripped
with fear. Everybody could die of starvation.

The novel ends with two events. Moti’s body lies under the mango-­tree,
people come to see and shudder, but ultimately it is Gangacharan and
Durga Bhattacharya, another Brahmin, who along with Ananga and the
Kapali woman, arrange for the last rites. Finally, Jadu Pora offers to take
the Kapali woman to the city and safety, but she refuses to go. One might
speculate about the possibility here of a “weak” ethical position, carefully
distinguished from numb passivity and heroic choice. Gianni Vattimo, the
propounder of the idea of “weak thought” writes of Benjamin’s angel in
the ninth thesis from the “The Concept of History”:

The angel in Klee’s painting that Benjamin speaks of in Thesis 9 feels

enormous compassion [pietà] for the ruins that history has accumu-
lated at its feet. … This follows not from the fact that these relics seem
precious in view of some ideal construction, but from the fact that
they are traces of something that has lived.
(2018: 42; cf. Benjamin, 2006: 389–400)
182   Amlan Das Gupta
Ashani Sanket is the most unheroic of tales, unrelenting in its examination
of the debilitating moral effects of hunger. This recuperation of value,
however slight it might be, is as much part of the received wisdom of the
1943 famine.
The Great Famine is still part of our lives and memories in Bengal.
Perhaps relatively few remain to share with us their lived experiences, but
the cultural production that the Famine prompted is still strongly embed-
ded in our collective consciousnesses. I have tried to argue that the Great
Famine marks a moment of exceptionality, its greatest representations can
memorialize and mourn the event, but never exhaust its significance.
What then might be truly shocking is the facility with which many of us are
able to think of the persistence of these powerful images of deprivation
and loss in the aspirational fiction that is the South Asian metropolis: the
lines of the poet Premendra Mitra documenting the cry of multitudes on
Kolkata streets crying for rice-­water (phyan), from householders, evoke
ghosts that still inhabit our worlds.

(1989: 98)

[nagarer pathe pathe dekhecho adbhut ek jīb

t.hik mānusher mato
.
kingbā t.hik noy
jeno tār byangacitra bidrup bikrita
tabu tārā nar.e car.e, kathā bale, ār
. .
janjāler mato jame rāstāy rāstāy,
ucchisht.er āstākũr.e bose bose dhõke
.
- ār phyan cāy.]

You have seen on the city streets

Strange beings,
Human, yet not quite –
Cruel caricatures, twisted in scorn!
Yet they move, and speak
And pile up like garbage on the roads.
They sit, weary, on mounds of refuse
And cry for rice-­water.
 The economy of hunger   183
Notes
1 The Bengal famine is powerfully represented in the cultural production of
Bengali intellectuals from the 1940s onwards. A full list is unfeasible here, but
even the most cursory survey would include the work of the novelists
Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay, Satinath
Bhaduri, Manik Bandhopadhyay, and Sulekha Sanyal; poets like Kazi Nazrul
Islam, Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Jibanananda Das, Premendra Mitra, Sukanta
Bhattacharya, and Birendra Chattopadhyay; the playwright Bijan Bhattacharya;
the work of artists such as Zainul Abedin, Chittaprosad, and Somnath Hore;
the photographs of Sunil Janah and the films of Ritwik Ghatak.
2 The wider context of the famine has been extensively dealt with; see for
instance: Sugata Bose (1986) on the politics of Agrarian Bengal, and (1990) on
the Bengal famine; Joya Chatterji (1995), Partha Chatterjee (1984), and
Suranjan Das (1991, 1995) on land ownership, communalism, nationalism, and
riots in the period.
3 Janah’s photographs of the Bengal famine are discussed in V. K. Ramachan-
dran (1998) and published in Janah (2013); Chittaprosad Bhattacharya’s
sketches were published in Hungry Bengal: A Tour Through Midnapur District, by
Chittaprosad, in November, 1943; on Zainul Abedin, see Ela Sen, Darkening Days
(1944) and Sanjukta Sunderason (2017).
4 The British, fearing a Japanese invasion, adopted a scorched-­earth policy,
destroying crops or buying them up forcibly in areas that were thought to be
sensitive; they also seized boats for the same reason, seriously affecting river
transportation and fishing. See A. Sen, “Ingredients of Famine Analysis: Avail-
ability and Entitlements” (1981), who describes
the unquantified, but reported to be large, decline in the amounts of fish
caught and river transportation because of the government’s “boat denial”
policy … carried out in 1942. That policy, like the “rice denial” policy, was
also aimed at the elusive Japanese, and took the form of destroying or
removing boats capable of carrying ten passengers or more in a vast area of
river-­based Bengal; it did not touch the Japanese, but played havoc with
river-­transport … and fishing.
(445)
5 This refers to the year 1350 in the Bengali calendar; often used specifically to
distinguish it from the other great scar in the history of colonial Bengal, the
famine of 1770, “Chhiattarer Monnontor”.
6 This famine was thus similar in scale and impact to the other calamity discussed
earlier in Chapters 3 and 4, the Gujarat famine of 1630–32, which also had
reportedly 3 million deaths.
7 See for instance, Yong, 2005: 292–3. The Famine Inquiry Commission (1945a:
53) claimed that 294,000 tonnes of rice moved into Bengal from other parts of
the country in 1943.
8 Some key positions, post-­Sen, are: Greenough (1982); Bose (1986); and more
recently, Mukerjee (2010) and Mukherjee, J. (2015).
9 Qadrat-­i-Ilāhi, “Amartya Sen’s Famine Philosophy”, The Daily Star, May 12 2005,
cited in Islam, 2007: 422, n.6.
10 All translations from the Bengali are mine, unless otherwise specified.
11 The inset reference is to E. P. Thompson’s “The Moral Economy of the English
Crowd in the Eighteenth Century” (1971). Ideas stated here and in other essays
are presented fully in Greenough’s Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, the
Famine of 1943–44 (1982).
184   Amlan Das Gupta
12 See also Thompson’s comment: “Greenough derives his account from Hindu
cosmology and is silent as to any differences between Hindu and Moslem
villagers” (345, n. 3).
13 I have used the English translation in Manik Bandyopadhyay: Selected Stories, ed.
Malini Bhattacharya, Kolkata: Thema, 2003. Page numbers in brackets after the
citations in the text.
14 See also Supriya Chaudhuri, 2011. For a recently articulated contrary view that
passivity was not the overriding response during this famine, see J. Mukherjee
(2015). My arguments regarding his position have been outlined above.
15 On the question of “unsayability” and the Holocaust, see, for instance,
Agamben, 1999: 31.
16 Satyajit Ray, Ashani Sanket (“Distant Thunder”), released 1973.
17 The Bengali edition used is Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Ashani Sanket,
Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh, 7th reprint, 2014. Page numbers are in brackets
after the citations in the text.
10 Are we performing dearth or is
dearth performing us, in modern
productions of William
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus?
Julie Hudson

Human beings securely provisioned with food and water may feel in
control of their environment, thus unaware that they are “performed by
ecologies”, to borrow a phrase from Baz Kershaw (2015). In his article
Kershaw argues, with reference to the work of Jane Bennett (2010) and
Gregory Bateson (1972 and 2000), that the environment is “internal to
human beings”, and thus shapes everything human beings do (Kershaw,
2015: 125). The pun in my chapter title suggests that when human beings
are in the grip of famine and hunger, controlled by and no longer con-
trolling their resources, those affected become painfully aware of being
performed by dearth thus also by earthly ecosystems (d’Earth). What may
be forgotten in benign conditions is that this applies at all times, for the
Earth contains, encompasses, and subsumes everything we do and, as
James Lovelock suggests in his writings on Gaia (2006), ultimately, is far
more powerful than any individual species on the planet. Thus, the only
sense in which we should see ourselves as “performing the Earth” is
responsively, sensitively, collaboratively, and in tune with natural forces
thus recognising the bit part we play in the whole.1
When satisfying our daily need for food, we could not be more inti-
mately embedded in earthly ecosystems, even when we are consuming
modern-­day processed food products that seem to be far removed from
the earth. It is an unavoidable fact that the consumption of food involves
human physiology at many levels – mechanical, chemical, and cellular, to
name three. As this implies, the ecosystem is (embedded in) the human
body and the human body is (embedded in) the ecosystem. In live
theatrical performance, the human body is centre stage, both on stage and
in phenomenological spectatorial responses in the audience. Thus,
Raymond Williams, discussing naturalism on stage, and describing the
“lives of the characters” as having “soaked into their environment” and
the environment as having “soaked into” their lives (Williams and Axton,
1997: 127), could be talking about any live theatrical performance or,
indeed, about life in a more general sense.
As a term, the “environment” is anthropocentric and throws into focus the
fundamental problem underpinning this chapter. This is the impossibility of
186   Julie Hudson
being integral to a system and at the same time having the perspective to
understand it. Perhaps because of this, the term environment is many-­layered.
It can be used to denote the natural environment (separate from or com-
bined with humans); social structures formed by living beings (including
humans) within and as part of the natural environment; the hard and soft
infrastructure of human society or the complex system of conditions sur-
rounding and infused through the human mind and body. Such subtleties
notwithstanding, the environment, however defined, needs to be understood
as “fundamentally performed by Earth’s ecologies” (Kershaw, 2015: 113).
Sometimes, the way the term “environment” is used in the context of activ-
ities performed by human beings mistakenly implies that we are in control,
performing earthly ecologies rather than being performed by them. Dearth
has the power to destroy this illusion as demonstrated by many examples of
eye-­catching real-­life events theatrically delivered through the media. To give
just two of many possible examples, Michael Buerk’s striking eyewitness
account of the 1984 Ethiopian famine (YouTube) and, much later, the 2005
media pictures of the after-­effects of Hurricane Katrina showing New Orleans
residents stranded on rooftops (Snyder, 2005), were memorable reminders
of the fragility of human beings disconnected from their ecologically
reshaped support systems. Twenty-­first century commodity price volatility
(also performed by d’Earth, as discussed below) has resulted in outright
dearth in some countries, a recent example being the Mexican Tortilla Riots
(BBC News, 2007). Moreover, climate modelling predictions suggest that
dearth will be an inevitable consequence of uncontrolled global warming in
some regions (IPCC, 2013). Considering such examples, it would be surpris-
ing to find an absence of dearth in performance even in a seemingly unlikely
place such as modern theatre performed in conventional theatre spaces.
In this chapter, I identify a small number of plays that came to the stage
many years ago at times of famine or harvest failure, and could, because
they thematise dearth, be described as dearth plays (cf. Mukherjee, A.,
2015, “literatures of dearth”). This chapter considers what happens to
them in modern-­day productions. If no food-­insecurity resonance can be
identified in the production or reception of modern productions of early-­
modern dearth plays, even perhaps to the extent that they are no longer
dearth plays in production, I want to argue that this may say something
potentially significant about the twenty-­first century environmental and
social cultural context. My reading of the absence of such resonance
where it would reasonably be expected is that it signals a society (or at
least a group of people within that society) in denial. Absence or under-­
emphasis would suggest a disturbing lack of awareness of the approaching
collision between growing populations and increasingly resource-­hungry
economies, on the one hand, and constrained resources potentially under
threat from over-­exploitation, on the other.
The methodology applied in this chapter borrows an idea from statis-
tics, where the impossibility of proving a negative proposition (such as the
 Are we performing dearth?   187
absence of a theme in a play) requires the framing of research questions
in an affirmative form. Hence the need to identify older dearth play texts
in which dearth can be clearly identified in the text (as well as the context)
that are still in production. In theory, plays that came to the stage any time
from 1500 onwards are potentially relevant to this exercise; in practical
terms, I found the early-­modern period to be the best source of earlier
plays still regularly performed. Works that came to the stage at this time
hold promise in this work for two reasons. First, it is a matter of record
that harvest failures and commodity price volatility were frequent in
England in the late 1500s and early 1600s. (For example, Mukherjee, A.
(2015: 309) cites Appleby (1978) as identifying 1587–88, 1597–98, and
1623 as “severe crises in the northwest”.) Second, several of them are still
in production. Where they still appear in production repertoires on a
regular basis, they present the possibility of informative empirical research
in the area of food insecurity in performance in modern times, thus indi-
rectly they may also reveal the extent to which we understand that we are
“performed by” the Earth we live on.

Grain prices performed by earthly ecologies

Grain prices are generally regarded as “performed by” economics. In reality,
economics and grain prices are shaped by natural forces – human beings set
up market systems and earthly ecologies play through them. The early-­
modern chronology of harvest failures and social duress can thus be under-
stood from arable crop price data running from 1450 to 1649, compiled by
Peter Bowden (see Thirsk, 1967: Table I, 815–28; cf. Hoskins, 1964: 28–46).2
These data are suggestive of the price-­squeeze suffered by labourers on rel-
atively fixed wages in the context of commodity price volatility. The segment
of data relevant to this chapter shows grain prices between 1534 and 1630
(Thirsk, 1967: 818–21). The same volume also compiles Southern English
wage rates for agricultural labourers and building craftsmen for the same
years (Table XVI, 865). It should be noted that Bowden tabulates grain
prices annually, and wages only for each decade, so it is quite possible that
the data are overstating the parlous situation people could find themselves
in when grain prices rose and their wages failed to follow; however, it seems
safe to assume that wages would be relatively static. Some years – for instance
1600–03 – would provide relief (grain prices fell while wages stood still) but
hunger pains would never be far away for those working in these sectors,
and, at times (e.g. 1595–96, 1600, and 1612) grain-­based staples would have
been downright unaffordable.

Early modern plays potentially influenced by dearth

I will briefly discuss two well-­documented Shakespearian examples of
dearth-­relevance – The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597–99) and King Lear
188   Julie Hudson
(1606) – as well as modern examples of dearth in performance, then move
on to consider a specific scene in William Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus
(1605–08) in greater detail.3
Merry Wives may have been written somewhere between 1597 and 1599
(Melchiori, 2000), thereby immediately following a severe deterioration in
food affordability (see Hoskins, 1964: 32). Kinney explores differences
between the folio and quarto editions of the play that seem to be largely
explained by the impossibility of staging the play as first written and where
first intended (Windsor) because of the political sensitivity of laughing at
a fat, profligate wastrel at a time when food was no laughing matter
(Kinney, 1993).4 An awareness of the interconnectedness of failed politics
and failed agriculture is shown to run through King Lear, and other plays,
by Archer et al. who comment:

Following 1 Henry VI (1592) and Henry V (1598–9), King Lear is the

third and final of Shakespeare’s plays to include an allusion to darnel.
The first two plays […] use darnel and related imagery to […] interro-
gate contemporary issues of food supply and national security.
(Archer et al., 2012: 530)

A relatively well-­known illustration of the topicality of dearth in the Shake-

spearian cultural context shaping the plays lies in the connection between
events in William Shakespeare’s own life, and the riots depicted in the
opening scenes of the Coriolanus. This play is thought to have been written
in the first decade of the seventeenth century, some five to ten years after
the events contextualised by E. K. Chambers, and cited below:

The dearth appears to have been particularly felt in South-­West

Warwickshire […]. Sturley reports to Quiney on 24 Jan.1958, that the
people were growing “malcontent”, and were approaching neighbour-
ing justices with complaints against “our maltsters”. There was wild
hope of seeing them in a halter, and “if Lord God send my Lord of
Essex down shortly, to see them hanged on gibbets at their own
doors”.
(Chambers, 1930: 100–1)

It is not known whether Shakespeare saw this exchange, but unlikely that
he was unaware of public sentiment in respect of the grain traders of his
day. Indeed, subject to the play’s having come to the stage early on in
1608, the 1607 anti-­enclosure riots may have brought the issue of unequal
access to food and food-­related resources back into focus again. One can
imagine the feelings of William Shakespeare, the well-­to-do 1598 trader in
“ten quarters of malt” (cited by Chambers (99) with reference to docu-
mentation of “Returns made to the authorities” on 4 February 1598), con-
templating the anger of hungry people performed by dearth: “Let us
 Are we performing dearth?   189
revenge this with our pikes, before we become rakes” (I.i.20–1). There are
strong arguments, as Steve Hindle demonstrates (2008), for associating
Coriolanus with the Midlands Rising, and Shakespeare is also thought to
have engaged with the immediate context of food riots in London in his
earlier play Romeo and Juliet (1599; cf. Fitter, 2000).
In our times, technology has provided new approaches to food produc-
tion and preparation, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this has
not banished food insecurity as a social concern. The profits made by food
commodity traders are as sensitive now as they were in early modern
England: so much so that some global banks have closed down their agricul-
tural commodity funds, in a good example of markets in the grip of ecolo-
gies (Archer et al., 2012). Food security and nutrition are front of mind for
politicians as I write this for a number of reasons, including: the prominent
discussions in the media of the food-­related effects of the economic down-
turn (hunger in Greece, food banks in the UK, and political change under
way in both countries); long-­standing discussions of climate change (to
which the food habits of some nations contribute) and its likely impacts on
unequal societies; science reports such as the Assessment Reports of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggesting that severe water
shortages are likely in major food-­producing parts of the world; and debates
about the nutritional quality of sugar, and processed food.5 Having enough
food, but not of a quality sufficient to meet nutritional standards sufficient
for good health, may be a problem the early moderns would have regarded
as nice to have when the challenge was to find the next meal, yet it can also
be framed as a modern-­day form of dearth. In the twenty-­first century micro-
nutritional inequality is highlighted by the fact that people continue to
suffer the effects of malnutrition in developing countries alongside a world-­
wide obesity epidemic (also a form of malnutrition) in the west. Scientific
evidence suggests that the causes of the obesity problem are unlikely to be
Falstaffian – that is to say, caused by greed. Considering that NHS (National
Health Service) statistics find that the majority of British people have an
unhealthy Body Mass Index, and in 2011/12 a tenth of 4–5 years olds were
obese as they started school, it is more likely that something systemic is at
work. One of the causes named on the NHS (2013) website is as follows:
“There is easy access to cheap, high-­energy food that is often aggressively
marketed to people.” Superficially speaking, economics (thus, a social
failure) seems to have something to do with this problem. A 2015 report of
the UK Overseas Development Agency by Wiggins and Keats analysing food
prices between 1990 and 2012 reported that junk food had become signifi-
cantly cheaper while the price of fruit and vegetables had risen significantly.
The effects of this on nutrition are inevitably unequal because of the vari-
ation of shares in family income with wage levels, thereby reminding us of
the rise in prices at the end of the sixteenth century.
In general terms, then, even if definitions of food insecurity vary with
specific geographical and cultural contexts, dearth still appears to be a
190   Julie Hudson
s­ ufficiently sensitive issue to be present in theatrical performances in
developed countries. Moreover, there are enough modern-­day catalysts in
the broader context to magnify potential sensitivities, such as the significant
global economic downturns that occurred in 1973–75, 1980–81, 1990–91,
and 2008–10 (with continuing effects right up to the time of writing), and
the commodity price shocks of 1971–73 and 2005–08. Ingram et al. cite the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): a “rapid
rise in food prices in 2007–8 […] increased the number of hungry people
to 923 million” (2010: 554). Globally speaking, the 2008 credit crunch
exacerbated the problem by constraining incomes available for food, taking
the number of hungry people to over 1 billion world-­wide.

Food insecurity in performance

The year 1973, the first of the economic downturn triggered by the oil
crisis, was an appropriate moment in which to retell the story of
Shakespeare the landowner’s stance with respect to enclosures in 1614/15,
as in the modern example that follows. Edward Bond’s play Bingo was first
performed in Northcott, Exeter on 14 November 1973 and in the Royal
Court, London in 1974 (Bond, 1987), and revived at the Young Vic in Feb-
ruary 2012. Enclosures (in which the rich and powerful assumed owner-
ship of and consolidated small landholdings in the name of productivity)
had a number of unfortunate effects. As described by Greenblatt they
“tended to make grain prices rise, overturn customary rights, reduce
employment, take away alms for the poor, and create social unrest” (2004:
368–9). The period 1614/15 marked the enclosures battle in which Shake-
speare had come to a financial arrangement with potential enclosers of
Stratford land that would leave him no worse off, as an owner of certain
tithes, whatever happened. Thus protected, he did not join forces with the
Stratford Corporation to protect others more vulnerable to its effects
(Greenblatt, 2004: 377).
A directly ecocritical reference to the ecological themes underpinning
food security and identifiable in King Lear appeared in the 1994 Western
Literature Association Conference entitled “Defining Ecocritical Theory
and Practice” (ASLE, 1994). One of sixteen ecocriticism position papers
happened to talk about a performance of King Lear: “Olivier’s Lear”,
recently seen “again” (Black, 1994). For its author, the ecopolitical
problem he noticed in the recording of the 1983 television performance
was, I believe, a catalyst for his 1994 paper. The recording seems to have
resonated deeply. He describes it as a “transgression” that “the commodi-
fied landscape is sliced up and parceled out to the highest rhetorical
bidder”. He thus connects the play to a modern-­day ecocritical discourse
of (natural and human) exploitation and oppression, within which food
insecurity is embedded. The conference of the Western Literature Associ-
ation at which this and fifteen other position papers were presented came
 Are we performing dearth?   191
not long after the early 1990s economic downturn (thus a reminder of fru-
gality) and the all-­important 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which succeeded in
putting climate change on the map.6 The year 1994 was also when Caryl
Churchill’s climate change play The Skriker, which strikingly connects
environmental degradation to cannibalism, first came to the stage.7
Another production putting food and power centre stage arrived in
2012: a modern post-­script to King Lear in the form of a new play by David
Watson. This play explored what “sustaining that ‘gored state’ might
mean” in an epilogue to the play. In this play, the traitor Edmund is con-
fined to an “isolated prison”. An envoy from the crown – named Abina –
arrives to oversee the trial and is refused entry until his credentials can be
checked (Drew, 2012). As this requires a messenger to ride back to the
city, the suspicion is that his mission is being subverted by the prison
guards. Most significantly, in this context, the Warden also asks whether,
because they are starving, they can eat Abina’s horse, the agreement being
that it will be replaced by a new one from the city. In this reading – which
can be seen as a response to the ecological thread of meaning observed by
Black – the “gor’d state” seems to imply social collapse and dearth.
Overall, the above evidence suggests that dearth-­awareness has not
become less relevant on stage notwithstanding major cultural shifts such
as modern approaches to food procurement and preparation. Food con-
tinues to be a politically sensitive issue, identifiable in conventional theatre
spaces.

Coriolanus
William Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus stands out in the canon as clearly
connecting politics to food, thus it can be seen as a potentially interesting
litmus test of twenty-­first century dearth awareness, described above. The
key scene I identified in this play as an informative focal point for modern
attitudes to food security is Act One, Scene One. The riot in the opening
scene is peopled by “mutinous” citizens armed with “staves, clubs and
other weapons”. These “plebians” are protesting against hunger, and its
inequitable distribution between the well-­fed patricians and the rest.

If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we

might guess they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear:
the leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory
to particularise their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them.
(1976: I.i.16–21)

In the context of social inequality leading to food-­related power imbal-

ances, the arguments metaphorically presented to the Citizens by Coriola-
nus’ friend Menenius Agrippa readily connect to the idea that human
beings are performed by “d’Earth”, to use the terminology of this chapter.
192   Julie Hudson
He assigns a physiological dimension to food power-­politics, through the
famous fable of the dominant stomach and the inferior extremities. This
extended metaphor is important in being closely connected to three key
themes running through the play: power imbalances in the context of
food; bodily distemper and disease; and imbalances in the body politic.8
Menenius’ playful description of the patrician view of an appropriate
balance in the domain of food power – in which the senators of Rome are
benign distributors of food according to need – comes up repeatedly in
the context of Coriolanus’ tirades, as an idea he strenuously disagrees
with. Corn handed out for free “nourished disobedience” (III.i.117); it
was not deserved by those who had not fought for the city when needed
(III.i.125). The scorn in which Coriolanus holds the lower orders is
reinforced by such comments. However, they also reflect tensions in the
body politic, which is thrown out of balance by Coriolanus’ world view and
uncontrolled behaviour. Thus, for the tribunes he is (in yet another ecolo-
gical metaphor) a “disease that must be cut away” (III.i.292). Elsewhere, it
is made clear that he comes of a choleric stock – his mother describes
anger as her “meat”, and like the cannibal, devouring herself “[she]
starve[s] with feeding”. Cannibalism – yet another overturning of the
natural order of things – appears repeatedly in the play’s imagery. The
shocking moment when Volumnia kneels to her “corrected son” is yet
another. Coriolanus’ own description of this moment connects it to the
hunger driving the opening scene:

Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach

Fillip the stars. Then let the mutinous winds
Strike the proud cedars ‘gainst the fiery sun.
(V.iii.67–9)

The fact that the opening scene in Coriolanus is so core to the play raises key
questions about its modern performance and reception. What modern pro-
ductions do with this scene (whether it is emphasised or excised for
instance) is likely to say something about the cultural positioning of those
involved, in respect of dearth awareness, because productions that de-­
emphasise it are removing a deeply embedded part of the overall structure.
After all, a key point about Coriolanus as a dearth play is that food security –
defined as the opposite of dearth – is presented as depending upon the
social order. The achievement of balance between the extremes of dearth
and plenty also depends on an ordered relationship with nature. This also
depends, in turn, upon a balance in the body politic – the opposite of which
is depicted in Coriolanus. In this play, bad governance or stewardship, which
leads to the opposite of stability, is at the root of the dearth suffered by the
plebeians. The play thus thematises broken-­down social and natural rela-
tionships and their consequences. In modern parlance, dearth in perform-
ance is ultimately about system (and ecosystem) collapse.
 Are we performing dearth?   193
In the following section, I assess this by focusing on the relatively well
documented production history of Coriolanus, studied through evidence
discovered in performance archives and critical reviews.
The 1745 production of Coriolanus by Thompson dispensed with the
first three acts in the name of “neoclassical unity of action” (Ormsby,
2014: 16), thus dismissing food politics to the margin.9 In contrast, in
Brecht’s 1959 post-­war adaptation of the play, the opening scene dwells
more on food than on the lead protagonist Caius Martius, with the addi-
tion of a dialogue with The Man with the Child ready to flee the city for
“water, fresh air and a grave”, as well as lines that reinforce the import-
ance of food prices and food power-­politics. This weaves in contemporary
socialist politics at the same time (Shakespeare and Brecht, 2014):

First Citizen: Are you prepared to stand fast until the senate agrees it’s
us citizens who decide the price of bread?
Citizens: Yes, yes.
First Citizen: And the price of olives?
Citizens: Yes.

Brecht’s 1953 analysis of the first scene of the play makes it clear that, for
him, this scene is absolutely indispensable to the play, and that the first
scene is in no way a superficial excuse for the battles that follow:

I don’t think you realise how hard it is for the oppressed to become
united. […] Later on this unity of the plebeians will be broken up, so
it is best not to take it for granted at the start but to show it as having
come about.
(Willett, 1957, 1963, 1964: 252)

The context in which Brecht’s adaptation of Coriolanus developed – post-­

war East Germany where people spent long hours queuing for food –
seems to be topical to Brecht’s ideas on the dynamic driving riot.
Direct evidence is unlikely to be available in respect of whether the Cori-
olanus in production at the National Theatre (NT) in 1984–85 was expli-
citly connected by anyone involved to the modern-­day famine
(documented by Michael Buerk, as discussed above) that happened to be
evolving at the same time. Timing however suggests that these events had
the potential to connect. The Buerk interview was broadcast on 23
October 1984. Coriolanus rehearsals had begun three weeks beforehand
(Bedford, 1992: 193), and opening night was 15 December 1984. For
Robert Ormsby (2014: 140–56), the important politics lay in the volatile
mix of the 1984–85 miners’ strike and Arts Council funding cuts, suggest-
ing that local, rather than global, issues may have had a dominating influ-
ence on the reception of this production. On the other hand, Kristina
Bedford’s description of the “haphazard” system of “costuming the mob”
194   Julie Hudson
suggests that even if hunger-­awareness was not consistently present in
the minds of the production team, it does seem to have been on her
mind, considering the reaction she describes to this piece of the produc-
tion design. Her rehearsal notes on Menenius’ “fable of the belly”
speech show how important it was to the Company to “crack” this speech
and this scene. Thus its importance to the whole was recognised. Involv-
ing members of the audience, putting them on stage as citizens, was
likely to connect them to the hunger problems of the Citizens in the
text. However, for Bedford, this seemed to backfire in the London
performances:

“Hunger” […] issues solely from the mouths, not the souls and bodies
of the rebellious plebeians. The attire of several citizens plants them
firmly in the ranks of the middle class; […] and dissipates the tension
of acting “in hunger for bread, not in/Thirst for revenge”.
(Bedford, 1992: 31)

Greg Hicks (who played Tullus Aufidius) was interviewed by Bedford and,
in a similar vein, thought that “[…] the director [hadn’t] made an
opinion about what kind of citizens they are” (ibid.: 149–50). This produc-
tion could thus be described as out of tune with the play’s many eco-
systems, both natural and metaphorical.
As the discussion of Black’s response to King Lear, above, suggests, the
Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) 1994 Coriolanus was well-­positioned
in terms of its timing to reflect difficult economic conditions in the years
immediately preceding it. By all accounts, this Coriolanus was a memorable
production that put the issue of food security front and centre. So striking
was the opening – in which corn “[poured] like gold from the flies when
the play [opened] and [was] carried off in wooden bowls after the protag-
onist’s banishment” (Nightingale, 1994) – that an employee of the
Stratford-­upon-Avon Shakespeare Bookshop responded (in February
2015), to my question about whether the latest edition of the play was in
stock, by spontaneously describing this as a memorable moment in the
most outstanding production he had seen (starring Toby Stephens) no
less than two decades ago. Thacker’s second innovation – to stage the play
in France in the years leading up to the French Revolution, in which food
insecurity brought out by crop failures in the summer of 1788 was one of
the catalysts for social unrest (Neumann and Detwiller, 1990), could
hardly be more in tune with the idea that human society is (and has histor-
ically also been) “performed by” the ecosystems driving food systems.
Nevertheless, this cross-­connection between starvation and politics was not
appreciated by several newspaper critics (Coveney, Spencer, Hagerty, and
Peter, 1994) who variously described this transposition as “fatuous”,
“irritating”, “incongruous”, and “quite the wrong setting”. All did not
agree; for Irving Wardle (1994) the point was:
 Are we performing dearth?   195
Famine, warfare, plenty: these are the mainsprings of human action,
and they dominate the stage from the opening sight of doors slam-
ming shut on the grain store, to the city gates closing on the blood-­
soaked hero.

As the above suggests, dearth-­awareness (or the lack thereof ) seems to

show itself in different ways in the production history of this play. Some-
times, even the direct constraints of economic downturns in western coun-
tries fail to remind of other, worse privations, such as starvation. Michael
Dobson describes the mob scenes in David Farr’s 2002/03 RSC produc-
tion (about three years on from the global stock market crash of
1999/2000) as follows:

[In] today’s economic climate, when two is a retinue, and three’s a

crowd, this play’s inclusion of an angry mob as a main character can
make it extremely difficult to stage with the sort of naturalistic viol-
ence for which its street scenes call.
(Dobson, 2004: 285)

Questions left hanging in the air by this comment are whether this repres-
entation of the mob weakened the position of the plebeians, thus reinfor-
cing the imbalance of power generally encountered by the poor in the
context of food insecurity; and whether this (human) resource cut hap-
pened to be harsher on the plebeians than the patricians within the
production.
A few years on, there were two productions of Coriolanus in 2007. Both
took place early in the year, a few months before 15 September 2007,
which was the day savers queued round the block to try and get their
money out of Northern Rock, thus dramatically marking the start of the
credit crunch (Rayner, 2008). These productions both took place at a time
when irrational exuberance was still in full swing, increasing the likelihood
of reduced dearth (thus d‘Earth) awareness. Gregory Doran’s March 2007
production came just before the three-­and-a-­half year, £113 million refur-
bishment of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (Levy, 2010), and as suggested
above, also happened to coincide with peak of the financial bubble at
work in markets. It “cluttered the stage with a big old-­fashioned set” and,
recalling the 1984 production of Coriolanus, featured “woefully clean and
polite plebeians […] dwarfed by the set and unable to make up in energy
of menace what they lack in numbers”. Michael Dobson’s brief description
ironically suggests an emasculated mob in the presence of plentiful pro-
duction resources. In contrast, the Ninagawa Company (Barbican, 25–29
April) made good use of what must (also) have been a good production
budget for design and set and actors, but in a different spirit. The magnifi-
cation of the mob was achieved by a clever visual trick without physically
adding to the numbers involved:
196   Julie Hudson
As the house lights faded this immense, precipitous structure [resem-
bling an oriental ziggurat] was suddenly populated by an entire
brown-­clad plebeian riot, twenty strong and doubled and redoubled
again by the side mirrors, converging down the centre of the stairs,
and all shouting at [enormous] volume.
(Dobson, 2007: 345)

Even in the context of an impressive set, a hint of frugality that is abso-

lutely consistent with the play runs through Dobson’s description.
Moving on past the bubble to its aftermath, the 2012 World Shake-
speare Festival was well-­timed to contain food security-­related reactions to
the 2007–10 credit-­crunch and the commodity price-­shock that immedi-
ately preceded it. Food indeed was centre-­stage in the Chiten Theatre
Company’s World Shakespeare Festival production in Japanese at Shake-
speare’s Globe. In this production, a cast of five, taking up different roles,
performed Coriolanus as a chorus. With such a small cast this comes across
as a frugal (post-­crunch) production, and the same can be said of the
props budget. As described by Adele Lee (2013: 49), reviewing it in A Year
of Shakespeare:

The use of baguettes as props was [a] notable feature of this produc-
tion. All cast members brandished the baguettes as weapons while
their constant consumption of the bread reflected not just greed, but
the destruction and emasculation of Coriolanus (the baguette, after
all, can be a phallic symbol).

Watching a film of this production on Globe TV, I found that the

baguettes had interesting effects. Someone speaking powerfully and bran-
dishing bread as a sword could look strong and vulnerable at the same
time (a good description of Coriolanus); conversely a hungry person
armed with a baguette (and brandishing it rather than eating it) reminds
that hungry people can bring down governments. Although significant
parts of the play were excised as a consequence of Chiten’s choric
approach, food insecurity was prominent, and consistently embedded, in
this production.
Later in the year the National Theatre Wales and the RSC’s World
Shakespeare Festival Production in the Vale of Glamorgan “welded” the
work of two hunger-­sensitised playwrights with Coriolan/us. This produc-
tion also did a tremendous job of magnifying the mob by (in effect) recyc-
ling the audience:

As the massive hangar sliding-­door slid open and the 300-strong sell-­
out crowd who’d been huddling outside, buffeted by a Welsh wind
driving straight down the open valley, surged forward, we met our-
selves coming towards us. We were being filmed. We were being
 Are we performing dearth?   197
­ rojected, onto the big screen on the far wall and two smaller
p
screens closer to us.
(Chillington Rutter, 2013: 390)

Fusing the deprived mob and the audience seems all too appropriate in a
place disproportionately hit by the credit crunch because of the structure
of the job market and lower median levels of pay than elsewhere in the UK
(Fitzpatrick et al., 2013: 19).
In the physical Meadow Meanders created by Baz Kershaw, participants
who enter the maze are cryptically informed that the maze contains a puzzle
in the form of an earthly system, invisible from the ground, but potentially
visible to the mind’s eye of those who walk through it (2015: 127). In a
similar vein, the production history of Act One, Scene One of Coriolanus is
often about a collision of aesthetics and economics, but, meandering
through (and reading between the lines of) production archives, I found a
clear pattern. Some productions performed dearth responsively, sensitively,
and collaboratively. In such productions, dearth-­awareness can be described
as “ecologically systemic”. When the reverse seems to be the case, this can be
seen as a deeply ironical flouting of the natural order of things, in the
context of Coriolanus in particular. There is a small note of hope in this
chapter. This lies in the fragments of dearth-­awareness discerned in some of
the productions discussed above: perhaps human beings sometimes have suf-
ficient insight to stage dearth (or d’Earth) as if human life depends on it.

Notes
1 This chapter draws on an early draft of material in chapter 4 of my Warwick
University PhD (2017), “An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth in Performance”.
2 The collection and interpretation of price data during dearth and famine in
early modern England has a long and complex historiography, which is summa-
rised in Walter and Schofield (1989) and Mukherjee, A. (2015).
3 This chapter does not provide an exhaustive list of dearth plays, and there is
significant scope for further research in this area.
4 Falstaff has most frequently been interpreted in relation to the “grotesque” and
the “festive”, without engaging fully with the context of dearth in which he
appears. Exceptions are: Whitney (1994); Mukherjee, A. (2015: 45–9, 189–91).
Critical debates on Falstaff in relation to festivity and order in Henry IV are use-
fully summarised in Ruiter (2003: 1–39).
5 See, for example: Smith, 2013; Hartocollis, 2015; Trussell Trust, 2017; Miller,
2017; United Nations, Water and Climate Change. On nutritional debates, see,
for example: Lustig, 2012; Hudson and Donovan, 2014: ch. 9.
6 Rio Earth Summit, UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992).
“Resulting document” included the “United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change” (UNFCCC). See www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html.
7 On the environment in general, see, for example, Churchill, 1994: 48: “It was
always possible to think whatever your problem there’s always nature. […] But
it’s not available any more.” In the banquet scene (35), a “hag” looks desperately
for her dismembered body – “head”, “heart”, “arm”, “leg”, “finger” – on the
banquet table.
198   Julie Hudson
8 Of the many literary and historical discussions of this infamous trope, the follow-
ing are especially pertinent to the politics of food: George, 2000; Wilson, 1993;
Patterson, 1991; Sharp, 2007, Hindle, 2008. My analysis focuses on Coriolanus as
a “dearth play”, replayed in contemporary contexts of food insecurity, when per-
formances appropriated, in differing degrees, the rhetorical and political
nuances of Menenius’ fable of the belly.
9 The date of this production coincided with the time (mid-­eighteenth century
onwards) when famine and dearth started to become less frequent occurrences
in the history of England, although food shortage remains a significant problem
in British colonies, such as India (Hoskins, 1964; Walter, 1989, and Chapter 1 of
this book; Mukherjee, A., 2015).
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Index

Page numbers in bold refer to tables and those in italic refer to figures

agriculture 10, 12; climatic events, Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan 168;

prolonged effects of 97–9; crop Ashani Sanket 178–82
destruction 120, 121, 125–6; Bandyopadhyay, Manik 168; Chiniẏe
Donaldson, Frances: the “intellectual” khaẏni keno 174–8
working farmer 10, 152, 157, 163–4, Bayly, Chris 62
165; effects of flooding on food Bedford, Kristina 193–4
markets 105–7, 106; enclosures 190; begging 11, 27, 33, 142, 143
family and working farmers, Beinart, William 107
emergence of 155–7; farmers’ writings Bell, Adrian 152, 157
in standard agricultural histories, Bengal 6, 8; causes and effects of 1943
neglect of 153–4; geographical famine 168–70; dearth and famine in
impacts of climatic events 99–101, 99, the eighteenth century 38–44, 40,
100; government response to the 63–5, 101–5; famine 1943 11, 14–15;
Bengal famine 1787–8, 102–3; grain fictional writing 167; food markets
prices 99–101, 99, 100, 101, 187, 190; 1788 105–7, 106; geographical
harvest failure, politics of 23, 24–5, impacts of climatic events 99–101, 99,
28–34; Henderson, George: the “self- 100; literary representations of
made” working farmer 10–11, 152, famine 1943 170–82; price
157–61, 165; narratives of farming and movements and their implications
food security in mid-twentieth-century 45–9, 45, 46, 47, 48; prolonged
Britain 151–66; organic farming effects of climatic events 97–9; rice
153–4; reliance on official production and consumption 41–4;
information 151; relief from harvest rivers 40–1; rivers, inundations and
failure 26–7, 31–4, 35; Reynolds, grain scarcity 94–109; subsistence
Clifton: the “sceptical” working crises 37–51; typhoons and flooding
farmer 10–11, 152, 161–3, 165; rivers, 95–7
inundations and grain scarcity Bernier, Francois 39–40
94–109; state intervention 155, Bhattacharya, Bijon: Nabanna 170–1,
158–60, 165; typhoons and flooding 174
95–7; wages 187; working farmer Bhattacharya, Ujjayan 8, 94–109
narratives 152 Bond, Edward: Bingo 190
Alam, Muzaffar 62 Books of Orders 31, 32, 33, 34
Alamgir, Mohiuddin 37 Bowden, Peter 187
Allan, Rob 6–7, 52–70 Braddock, Bessie 13–14
Archer, J.E. 188 Brecht, B. 193
Buchanan, Francis 44, 49–50
Baird-Smith, R. 131, 133, 136 Buerk, Michael 186, 193
224   Index
Campbell, George: Extracts from Records drought 5, 9, 40, 45, 45, 48, 57, 59, 65,
in the India Office Relating to Famines in 79, 82, 95, 124, 126; debilitation of
India 1769–1788 65, 67–8 116–19; in eighteenth century India
Camporesi, Piero 1–2 63–8
cannibalism 1, 2, 26, 60, 81, 83, 191,
192 East India Company (EIC) 52, 63, 64,
Chambers, E.K. 188 73–4, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128; ship
Chapell, John 5 logbook records 54, 55–6
charity 27–8, 84–5, 128n5, 129–30, Edkins, Jenny 13
144–5 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
Chaudhuri, Supriya 174 4, 5, 7, 52, 52–3, 55, 56–7, 56, 58–9,
Chiten Theatre Company 196 68, 69
Churchill, Caryl, The Skriker 191 Elliot, Sir Henry Myers 1
climate change/events 6–7, 52–70, 73, England 21–36; famine and social and
114, 189; climate features of the economic change in early modern
seventeenth century 53–7, 54, 55, 56; England 21–3; food security, risk
connections with extreme weather insurance and the social economy of
52; drought 5, 9, 40, 45, 45, 48, 57, dearth 23–8; government
59, 63–8, 65, 79, 82, 95, 116–19, 124, intervention 31–3, 35; harvest failure,
126; historiography of the Indian politics of 23, 24–5, 28–34
crisis 53; hurricanes 119–23; India, Englands Parnassus 2, 3
climate and the seventeenth century environment: and human physiology
crisis 57–63, 59; monsoons 57, 64–5, 184–5
67–8, 124–7; palaeoenvironmental/ environmental disasters 114–15, 127–8
proxy records 57; scientific exchange, forms of 5–8
observations and records 53–6;
seventeenth century climate 53–7, 54, F-Treatment 14
55; weather 24, 81–2 famine and dearth: chorography of
Climate Data Modernization Program 78–80; chronology 3–5, 4; early
(CDMP) 55 modern England 21–36; food
Climatological Database for the World’s security, risk insurance and the social
Oceans (CLIWOC) 54, 55 economy of dearth 23–8; food
Clingingsworth, David 53, 62, 95 substitution 25–6; government
Colebrook, Henry Thomas 107, 108 intervention 31–4, 35; harvest failure,
Conford, Philip 153–4 politics of 23, 24–5, 28–34; literary
Corbett, Richard 79 representations of 170–82, 185–98;
County War Agricultural Executive representations of 1–3; and social
Committees (CWAEC) 159–60 and economic change in early
credit 27 modern England 21–3; social
economy of dearth 26; see also rivers;
Damodaran, Vinita 6–7, 52–70 subsistence crises
Danvers, F.C.: A Century of Famine 64–5, famine relief 9, 129–48; gratuitous
68 relief 130–1, 131–2, 136, 140;
Das Gupta, Amlan 11, 12 methods of 26–8, 35; poorhouses,
Datta, Rajat 6, 37–51, 95 principles and organisation of 132–6;
De-La-Noy, Michael 163 poorhouses beyond famine years
dearth see famine and dearth 139–45; state role in 129–30;
Deccan wars 88–92 unpopularity of poorhouses 136–9;
Dobson, Michael 195–6 work-based initiatives 130–1
Donaldson, Frances 10, 152, 157, farming see agriculture
163–4, 165; Four Years Harvest 153, Farr, David 195
163, 164 Fazl, Abul 1, 60
Doran, Gregory 195 Fiennes, Celia 79
Driver, Felix 135–6 Firbank, Thomas 152, 157
 Index   225
flooding: Bengal famine 1787–8, 101–2; Hunter, W.W. 45
climate, famine and riot, Bengal
103–5; effects on food markets India 52–70; climate and the
105–7, 106; geographical impacts of seventeenth century crisis 57–63, 59;
99–101, 99, 100; government climate features of the seventeenth
response to the Bengal famine century 53–7, 54, 55, 56; drought,
1787–8, 102–3, 105; prolonged famine and causality in the
effects of 97–9; rivers and famine eighteenth century 63–8, 65; famine
107–8; and typhoons 95–7 and death chronology 3–5, 4; Mughal
food markets 105–7, 106 empire 76–8, 83–4; seventeenth
food security 3, 10, 12, 185, 189–90; century crisis, historiography of 53–7,
early modern England 21–36; food 54, 55; see also poorhouses
insecurity in performance 190–1, Indian Famine Commission Report
191–7; narratives of 151–66; and risk 1880 29
insurance and the social economy of International Atmospheric Circulation
dearth 23–8 Reconstructions over the Earth
France, revolutionary period 119–23 (ACRE) 55
Islam, M.M. 168–9, 170
Gagnier, Regenia 145 Israel, Jonathan 59
gardens 76–8
General Letter From India 66, 67 Jahangir 76–7
Gommans, Jos 89 James I 74
Gordon, Stuart 88 James, Richard 79
Greenblatt, Stephen 190 Jones, Peter 117
Greene, Robert 80 Jugāntar 14
Greenough, Paul 11, 39, 171–2, 173
Grove, Richard 5, 52–3 Kershaw, Baz 185, 197
Gujarat famine (1630–2) 1, 5, 73–93; Khan, Syed Ahmad 132, 138–9
famine chorography 78–80; Kinney, A.F. 188
representing the famine 81–8, 84;
space, place and mobility, discourses Lāhawrī, Abd Al-Hamīd 1, 2, 81–5, 90,
of 74–8 91–2
landscape architecture 76–8
Habib, Irfan 77; The Agrarian System of Laslett, Peter 21
Mughal India 61 Lee, Adele 196
Halley, Edmund 53–4 Lewes, George Henry: The Psychology of
Hamilton, James 6–7, 52–70 Common Life 115, 117
Henderson, George 10–11, 152, 165; Li, Jianping 57
Farmer’s Progress 161; The Farming literature: famine, literary
Ladder 158, 159–61, 165 representations of 170–82; see also
Henvey, Frederick 139–40 Martineau, Harriet and political
Hicks, Greg 194 economy; plays
Hindle, Steve 75 Little Ice Age (LIA) 4, 24, 57, 58, 59, 62
Hindman, W. 67 Louis XIV 31
Hindustan Times 14 Lovelock, James 185
Hobsbawm, E.J. 53, 62
Homewood, Robert 152, 157 McNeill, John 52
Hudson, Julie 12, 185–98 McRae, Andrew 75–6, 78–9
Hughes, Lotte 107 Malthus, Thomas 13, 119; Essay on the
human agency 24–5, 34, 38, 52 Principle of Population 114–15, 122–3;
Hume, David 125 influence on Martineau 115;
hunger 13, 115–16, 117, 125; economy Principles of Political Economy 114
of 167–84; extreme forms of eating Marshall, Peter 62
1–2 Martin, John 153
226   Index
Martineau, Harriet and political political economy see Martineau,
economy: Autobiography 115, 122; Harriet and political economy
Britain’s investment in revolutionary poor law 10, 13–14, 32–3, 74–5
France 119–23; Cinnamon and Pearls poorhouses 9, 129–48; beyond famine
116, 123–7; dispossession, food years 139–45; caste issues 136–9;
security and imperialism 123–7; compulsory detention 141;
drought, debilitation of 116–19; conflicting expectations of 141–3;
French Wines and Politics 116, 119–23; cooked food 134–5, 135, 136–8, 143;
Illustrations of Political Economy 9, costs 143–4; principles and
113–28; Malthus, influence of 115; organisation of 132–6; seventeenth
Sowers Not Reapers 116–19, 124 century crisis, historiography of 53;
memory 3, 12, 13–14, 77, 130, 167 unpopularity of 136–9; work refusal
mobility 78–80; of armies 88–92; 139–40; workhouses 10, 133, 134,
discourses of 74–8, 81–8 135–6, 140, 144–5
Modern Asian Studies 60 population growth 21–2, 34; Bengal
monsoons 64–5, 67, 67–8, 124–7 42–3
moral economy 6, 21, 25, 35, 171–3, 174 prices 39; effects of flooding on food
mortality crises 6, 21, 22, 24, 36n1, 37, markets 105–7, 106; grain prices 190;
38–9, 46, 48–9, 60, 63–4, 81, 138, 139 price movements and their
Muir, Cameron 12 implications 45–9, 45, 46, 47, 48
Mukherjee, Ayesha 1–17, 73–93 prisons 134
Mukherjee, Janam 172–3 protest 28, 29–31, 53, 61–2, 116, 117,
Mukherjee, Radhakamal 107 118, 120, 125–6; climate, famine and
Mundy, Peter 1, 5, 7, 74, 76; Travels 78; riot, Bengal 103–5; literary
writings on the Deccan wars 88–90, representations of 188–9, 191–7;
92; writings on the Gujarat famine passivity 171–3, 174–7
(1630–2) 81, 84, 85–8
Murdoch, J. 151 Qazwīnī, Md. Amin 81, 82, 83

Nashe, Thomas 80 Rennell, James 40–1, 107, 108

National Farmers Union (NFU) 160–1, Reynolds, Clifton 10–11, 152, 161–3,
162 165
National Theatre 193–4 Richards, John F. 58, 61
nutrition 189 risk insurance 23–8
rivers 8, 94–109; Bengal famine 1787–8,
obesity 189 101–2; climate, famine and riot,
Ó Grada, Cormac 37 Bengal 103–5; effects of flooding on
Ormsby, Robert 193 food markets 105–7, 106; and famine
107–8; geographical impacts of
Parker, Geoffrey 7, 52, 58, 59, 60–1, 62; climatic events 99–101; government
Global Crisis, War, Climate Change and response to the Bengal famine
Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century 1787–8, 102–3, 105; prolonged
53 effects of climatic events 97–9, 99,
petitioning 31 100; typhoons and flooding 95–7
place, discourses of 74–8 Roxburgh, William 66
Platt, Hugh 28; Remedies Against Famine Roychowdhury, Binata 174
76, 80 Rudé, George 121
plays 185–98; Coriolanus 12, 188–9,
191–7; early modern plays potentially Scholl, Lesa 9, 10, 113–28
influenced by dearth 187–90; food Scott, James 171
insecurity in performance 190–1; Sen, Amartya 11, 26, 37, 114, 169, 170
grain prices performed by earthly Śeẏāl Pand.it (Learned Fox) 14–15
ecologies 187; human embeddedness Shahjahan 76, 84–5, 90
in ecosystems 185–7 Shakespeare, William 12; Coriolanus 12,
 Index   227
188–9, 191–7; King Lear 187–8, 190, Cosmographie 75; Pennyles Pilgrimage
191; The Merry Wives of Windsor 187–8 74–5
Sharma, Sanjay 9, 10, 129–48 thirst 117
Shi, Feng 57 Thompson, E.P. 25, 28, 173
Smith, Adam 13 travel 7, 74–5, 78–80; by armies 88–92;
Smith, Mark W. 125 writing 81–8
South Asian summer monsoon index Trevor-Roper, Hugh 53, 62
(SASMI) 57 Twining, Thomas 41
Spaccini, Giovan Battista: Cronaca
modenese 2 Vernon, James 13
space: discourses of 74–8; spatial range
of famine 81–5; and travel 79–80 Wakeman, Frederick 59
Strachey, John 132–5 Walter, John 6, 21–36
Street, A.G. 152, 162–3; Farmer’s Glory Ward, N. 151
153 Wardle, Irving 194–5
subsistence crises 6, 35, 37–51; dearth Watson, David 191
and famine in Bengal in the weather see climate change/events
eighteenth century 38–44, 40; Western Literature Association 190–1
entitlement failures 37–8; price White, Sam: Climate of Rebellion in the
movements and their implications Early Modern Ottoman Empire 53
45–9, 45, 46, 47, 48 Williams, Raymond 185
Swaminathan, M.S. 169, 170 Williamson, Henry 152, 154
Swing Riots 1830 116, 117, 118, 128n2 Williamson, Jeffrey 53, 62, 95
Wilson, Rob J.S. 57
tastes 125 Winter, Michael 10–11, 12, 151–66
Taylor, James 41 workhouses see poorhouses
Taylor, John 78, 79–80; The Carriers World Shakespeare Festival 196