What were the differences in how famines impacted India under Company rule, British crown rule, and the Princely States?

[Maklodes]

My impression is that generally Indian states prior to the East India Company were generally better at mitigating famines than the British (with some exceptions, such as Muhammad bin Tughlaq's reign), but I'm not sure to what extent that's just less detailed preserved records prior to the company's arrival, or whether the princely states continued to have any greater effectiveness than the British at famine relief into the raj. Did the British East India Company (pre-1857) and the direct Government of India (post-1857) have significantly different policies or effectiveness in dealing with famine? What about those princely states which retained their own administration?

[Hanny]

Not quite what your after, but try Late Victorian Holocausts, http://books.google.co.uk/books/abou...d=3IrKEzgkQkMC for the policy and effect of those in India, a tad overly anti imperlistic in tone but does the job with enough solid facts to suppoert itself

[Turtler]

I would cautiously second Hanny's suggestion since if nothing else it is a fresh look into it, regardless of whether or not you agree with Davis's anti-Imperialism or Socialism (I sure as heck don't with either). However, I've found his presentation to be far too sensationalist and his tone a bit too biased to trust, especially in light of what I'm going to get into.

The truth is, I'm not an expert on Indian famine by any means whatsoever. It is obvious that on some level British policy artificially worsened plenty of famines in India, even when they were legitimately trying their best to help. We also see similar cases with the Irish famine in particular. However, in terms of comparative value on famine relief between the Company, Crown, and Princedoms, does this mean the British were worse?

Well, I'm not sure I am convinced at that, and a five minute look I took during a break while looking on the Lowest Common Denominator (TM) makes me question Davis's equation of it with "Late Victorian Holocausts." Particularly because Raj Famine literature tends to focus on the latter half of the reign, during the "Great" Famine of the 1870's, the Bengal Famine of 1943, and the famines bookmarking the turn of the 20th century.

A problem with this approach can be seen by even the dismal little timeline on the aforementioned Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin...g_British_rule If those higher level estimates are anything to go by, it indicates that the 30 or so years leading up to 1800 (when the Raj was still very, very young and hadn't even stomped out the Mysoreans, Marathas, etc) saw more death and destruction from famine in the Raj than the 147 years after 1800. In other words: for all the focus we have on the latter day famines, they were actually *less damaging* than those in the 1700's, which to the best of my knowledge have far less literature and examination at them, and which happened at a time when other factors were in play (like Burmese penetration into Bengal).

It also definitely makes me believe there is at least some selection bias at play when we look at things like the famines in the later Raj and chalk it up to British commercial policy.

I am not an expert and I would be stupid if I trusted Wikipedia, but that is enough to give me pause about the traditional "Victorian Holocaust" narrative of people like Davis. There *is* a definite lining of truth to that mind because British policies in India definitely hurt in a lot of ways. But it does make me believe that might not be the biggest part of the story like a lot of people want to claim (or like what happened in Ukraine). Especially since
the timeline also shows how it hit British domain and Princely State territories and a huge number were in the latter.

In terms of British policy on famine relief and government of the Raj in general, they tended to be almost as feudal- if not more in many ways- than the feudal governments of yore in India. Curtailing the right to roam, forcing strict crop production like we saw in Ireland and elsewhere, and generally favoring rather conservative politics and social flow. However, they also preferred working through locals and sometimes even deferring to them, which was why the Princely States existed and in the 1943 famine the British administration spent a huge amount of time wrangling with the local grandees and landlords to release the food they had stockpiled while open famine was rampaging along with the Japanese.

However, the idea of famine relief started fairly early (before the end of the 18th century) and while both Company and Crown alternated between it and the "ignore it it'll go away" approach, they did slowly grow to take a more active, sensitive approach to stopping famine. Hence why they eventually came up with the Famine Codes and other activist attempts to get famine relief established. That said, the conservatism and the preference they had for keeping Indian society operating around traditional, (often artificially) entrenched lines also hurt a lot.

Sorry if this is not so helpful, but it's my amateur two cents.