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Ten Famines in Forty Years — British India under the Crown, 1860–1900

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Ten Famines in Forty Years, British India 1860–1900 A cinematic timeline of the ten famines R.C. Dutt recorded under Crown rule. Bars show recorded death tolls where Dutt gives a figure; the 1877 Madras famine (5 million) towers over all. 1874 Bengal, under a light fixed land tax, recorded no deaths. Events where Dutt gives only relief numbers are marked separately. BOSE BOYS · THE COVER STORY Ten Famines in Forty Years British India under the Crown, 1860–1900 — a famine every four years 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 200k+ ’60 1.0m ’66 1.2m ’69 ’74 5,000,000 ’77 1.25m ’78 ’89 ’92 3m relief ’97 6m relief ’00 1874 · BENGAL Same drought. No deaths. A light, permanently-settled land tax. 1877 · MADRAS A heavy, ever-rising tax. The difference was policy, not rain. recorded death toll (Dutt) deaths never officially counted no loss of life ≈ 15 MILLION DEAD IN 42 YEARS OF CROWN RULE SOURCE — Romesh Chunder Dutt, “Indian Famines: Their Causes and Prevention” (King & Son, Westminster, 1901). Bar heights encode the death tolls Dutt records; dashed marks are events for which he gives only relief figures or none. Nothing inferred.

FROM THE ARCHIVE — The Famine Ledger: the numbers, the 1874/1877 control, the drain, the distress gold →

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