Hickel’s “response” makes their claim that British colonial rule caused famines in India even weaker than it was before. Since a fuller critique is expected to appear in History Reclaim, I will discuss three points the longer article does not deal with.
The strongest part of the response is that in the last quarter of the 19th c, death rate rose, and some of that rise was not due to the Deccan famines. The proximate cause was contagion. Common diseases (cholera and “fever”) and uncommon ones (plague) took a steadily heavier toll
Bacteria, and not the British, caused contagion. Further, disease transmission dynamic changed with mass migration. For example, many people from famine-hit western India came to Bombay city in the 1880s. The 1897 plague was devastating partly for overcrowding.
British policy enabled the railways which enabled mass migration. Indians used the railways to go to places that offered food, water, and work. These movements spread disease. If this caused rise in death, it was the consequence of a modernization that had positive effects too.
Hickel claims that precolonial famine relief worked well. I have shown elsewhere that most Mughal/Sultanate accounts came from hagiographies, the authors lived in the capitals and felt obliged to praise the kings. The “data” cannot be compared with the later surveys and censuses.
Long-range living standard comparison use dubious methods. Desai’s measurements were controversial. Most measurements of wages and consumption in precolonial times rely on data that carry huge observation bias. I discuss Allen et al more fully in the History Reclaim piece.
The only reliable before-after comparison is that population growth rate in the pre-census centuries was positive but near-zero owing to high death rate. A permanent radical fall in death rate began in the 1920s. British rule was partly responsible for the trend shift.
Hickel cites data to show that life expectancy was worse in India during British rule. It doesn’t follow that British rule was responsible. We can draw that result if we can show that culturally-geographically the compared units were similar, the only difference being state form.
They were not. Cultural practices like low age at marriage (13 for girls in 1901), infanticide, hygiene, per capita water availability and quality, pathogenic environment made India distinct from Europe and China. Sub-Saharan Africa is better comparison, we do not have full data.
Hickel cites Utsa Patnaik’s claim that foodgrain availability per head declined in India in the early 20th c. This is an example of the kind of sloppy history that Patnaik has offered for years. The ratio fell “because” deaths fell. It did not cause famines.
The ratio is meaningless too. Indians of different regions ate different grains. Grains traded faster by rail (reducing waste). Imports plugged local shortages (Burma rice in Bengal). Even if every Indian ate less grain, we still do not know what that did to the bodies.
Bengal famine is another example of sloppy politicized analyses, but I have discussed that elsewhere. I deal with these subjects extensively in almost all my general economic history books. Patnaik, Hickel and others of their persuasion need to engage with these writings.
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