Agra famine of 1837–1838
The Agra famine of 1837–1838
By the end of 1838, approximately 800,000 people had died of starvation, as had an even larger number of livestock.
Onset of the famine
There had been a number of droughts and near-famines in the region in the first third of the nineteenth century.
The 1837 summer
Other nineteenth-century accounts also spoke of distress, chaos, and migration southwards:
"Grain merchants closed their shops, the peasantry took to plunder; cattle starved and died; in the part of the
Auckland found the conditions in these districts to be so distressing that, in his words, "the largest expenditure" was required "in order to palliate the evil, and prevent the total depopulation of the country by starvation and emigration."[8]
Relief
Although some relief was provided in the last few months of 1837, famine relief on a large scale did not begin until February 1838. "... the relief afforded, in its present state, is inadequate to the wants of the people, but it must not on that account be considered valueless. Thousands have by it been saved from death by starvation, and the flood of emigration has been checked. The aid afforded ... will ... evince to the people that the Government are anxious to relieve their present unparalleled suffering, and the example thus set forth has ... been an inducement to hundreds to bestir themselves, on behalf of the starving poor, who never before thought of lending their aid in relieving the distress."[11]
From the onset of the scarcity, the Government provided only "work-relief" for able bodied persons.[12] "Charitable relief," or relief for the old and indigent, was left to private efforts.[12] At first, local grain merchants were drafted in the relief effort: the laborers in the relief works received ration tickets which they then exchanged for grain at the grain merchant's; the merchant, in turn, recovered the cost of the grain plus his profit by presenting the tickets to the government.[13] Soon, however, it was discovered that the merchants were adulterating the grain rations to fully half their weight with "sand or powdered bones."[13] In April 1838, therefore, the Government took over the distribution of the rations.[13] The table below gives the expenditure in the relief works in one district, Farrukhabad, for the duration of the scarcity.[13]
|
According to
Merchants
Merchants as a class were variably affected by the famine, with some wealthier merchants, who had sufficient capital to diversify their holdings, profiteering, even as the poorer ones suffered much distress.[14] At the onset of the famine, the rich salt merchants of the middle Doab were immediately able to switch from salt to grain and make windfall profits.[14] The small salt merchants, especially the itinerant merchants, however, did not have such flexibility.[14] According to Bayly 2002, p. 293, a British military officer observed Banjara merchants—who had traditionally traded salt from their region in Rajputana for grain from Rohilkhand to the north-east—returning "from the northern markets of Farrukabad and Shahjahanpur" with no loads of grain on their cattle; the price of grain had been too high for them to turn a profit.[14] Similarly, the intermediate salt merchants, who had traditionally bought salt in bulk from the big merchants and offered it on credit to the small ones, now found themselves with nothing to buy or sell.[14]
The Agra region, had in fact had a serious economic downturn in the decade before, as bullion had become scarce.[14] The smaller merchants, such as those selling "brass vessels, low grade cloths and liquor" had already been in considerable distress, since their patrons, the small farmers, had no surplus income to buy their goods with.[14]
See also
- Ceded and Conquered Provinces
- Chalisa famine
- Company rule in India
- Drought in India
- Famine in India
- Timeline of major famines in India during British rule
Notes
- ^ Adaptation of Siddiqi 1973, p. 200; see also Sharma 1993, p. 340
- Presidency of Agra; later, in 1904, the region again became the Agra Province of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (U.P.)
- ^ a b c Sharma 1993, p. 341
- ^ Sharma 1993, p. 370
- ^ a b Sharma 1993, p. 337
- ^ Sharma 1993, pp. 338–339
- ^ a b c d e Sharma 1993, p. 339
- ^ British East India Company, 13 February 1838, quoted in Sharma 1993, p. 339
- ^ Crooke 1897, pp. 170–171
- ^ a b c Girdlestone 1868, p. 48
- ^ Quoted in Girdlestone 1868, p. 48
- ^ a b Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III 1907, p. 484
- ^ a b c d e Girdlestone 1868, p. 55
- ^ a b c d e f g Bayly 2002, p. 293
References
- ISBN 0-19-566345-4
- Crooke, William (1897), The North-Western Provinces of India: their history, ethnology and administration, London: Methuen and Company. Pp. x, 361. (facsimile reprint: Asian Educational Services), ISBN 81-206-1067-9
- Girdlestone, C. E. R. (1868), Report on Past Famines in the North-Western Provinces, Allahabad: Government Press, North-Western Provinces. Pp. iv, 110, IX appendices xliii
- Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III (1907), The Indian Empire, Economic (Chapter X: Famine, pp. 475–502, Published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Pp. xxx, 1 map, 552.
- Sharma, Sanjay (1993), "The 1837–38 famine in U.P.: Some dimensions of popular action", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 30 (3): 337–372, S2CID 143202123
- Siddiqi, Asiya (1973), Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State: Uttar Pradesh, 1819–1833, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 222, ISBN 0-19-821553-3
Further reading
- Commander, Simon (1989), "The Mechanics of Demographic and Economic Growth in Uttar Pradesh, 1800–1900", in Dyson, Tim (ed.), India's Historical Demography: Studies in Famine, Disease and Society, London: Routledge Curzon. Pp. 308, ISBN 0-7007-0206-7