British Colonial Rule in India
Advanced Democracies (AD) – Most Plausible Estimate (MPE): 57.2
There are no estimates for the total number of Indians killed by British Colonial Rule. But research has convincingly shown that British colonialism was partly or fully responsible for a number of major famines and pandemics in British India. Here we are concerned with politically-induced famine deaths and killings since 1769. The numbers for the Bengal famine of 1943 are included in the WWII-estimates.
In his magisterial book “Late Victorian Holocausts – El Nino Famines and The Making of the Third World” historian Mike Davis analyses the devastating effects of British colonial policies in India from the second half of the 19th century until independence. He convincingly shows that many major famines in British India were to a large degree the result of brutal and exploitative colonial policies. Demographer Arup Maharatna analyses the same major famines as Davis in his book: “The Demography of Indian Famines – A Historical Perspective”.
In his book Davis cites three studies – including Maharatna – for the famine from 1876 to 1879, which range from 6.1 million to 10.3 million famine victims. The average of the three studies is 8.2 million.
Davis also cites three studies – including Maharatna – for the famines of 1896-1902, which range from 6.1 to 19 million victims. 19 million is the result of a Lancet-study. The number has been accepted as the best estimate by four major historians, as Davis points out. Maharatna looks at two large famines in this time period. He estimates that 5.6 to 9.6 million Indians perished in these two famines. But Maharatna emphasizes that he uses the death rates of the five years prior to every famine as a baseline for his calculations. Death rates in this time period remained very high between and after major famines. This may explain why the Lancet study comes up with a much higher number for the whole time period. I choose 12 million as the most plausible estimate.
Maharatna estimates that 2.1 to 3.2 million Indians died in the famine of 1907-1908. I consider 2.6 million to be the most plausible estimate.
A Wikipedia entry called “Timeline of major famines in India under British rule” lists more famines. Up to 10 million Indians died in the Great Bengal famine from 1769 to 1770. In his book “The Anarchy” William Dalrymple explains in great detail why ruthless exploitation and criminal neglect by the East India Company was largely to blame for the high death toll. Plausible estimates range from 1.6 to 9 million famine victims as a result of criminal policies. I choose 4 million as the most plausible estimate.
Wikipedia also lists the Chalisa famine from 1783 to 1784 and the Madras famine in South India from 1782 to 1783. Up to 11 million people perished in these two famines. British culpability seems less clear to me than in other large famines. Plausible estimates for the number of people who died because of criminal policies by the East India Company range from 1.5 to 6 million. I choose 3 million as the most plausible estimate.
Up to 11 million people died in the Doji Bara famine or Skull famine from 1791 to 1792. This estimate may be too high. British culpability is less clear than in most other famines. Plausible estimates for the number of people, who died because of criminal policies by the East India Company range from 1.6 to 6.5 million. I choose 3.5 million as the most plausible estimate.
0.8 million Indians died in the Agra famine from 1837 to 1838. 2 million perished in the Upper Doab famine from 1860 to 1861. Estimates for the Orissa famine of 1865 to 1867 range from 4 to 5 million victims. I could not find any solid evidence to back up the estimates for these three famines. Plausible estimates for the total number of victims range from 4.3 to 7.8 million victims. I choose 5.8 million as the most plausible estimate.
1.5 million died in the Rajputana famine from 1868 to 1870. British culpability is less clear than in most other famines of the time. I blame British rule for anywhere between 0.3 and 1 million victims. I choose 0.6 million as the most plausible estimate.
The number of Indians executed or massacred by the British imperial forces is unknown. But there were numerous brutal military campaigns during British rule. Here I will only include the large number of killings during India’s First War of Independence, which the British usually call the Mutiny or Rebellion of 1857. All sides in this war committed acts of atrocities. 6000 Europeans were killed. 0.8 million is a very conservative estimate for the number of Indian soldiers and civilians who lost their lives. Indian writer Amaresh Misra tries to show in his controversial book: “War of Civilisations: India AD 1857” that Britain killed 10 million Indians in ten years in reaction to the uprising. This estimate is based on calculations of population losses. Most historians believe that this estimate is too high. Plausible estimates range from 0.8 to 10 million. I take 3 million as the most reasonable estimate. These estimates do not include any other wars or massacres in British India.
The Indian economist Chinmay Tumbe has written an important book called: “The Age of Pandemics 1817-1920 – How They Shaped India and the World”.
Tumbe estimates that “cholera killed around 50 million people worldwide between 1817-1920”. Up to 40 million died on the Indian subcontinent: around 30-31 million died because of Cholera’s endemicity in India and another 8-10 million in cholera pandemics. Tumbe emphasizes that “cholera death rates from were increasing in India in the late 19th century, even as they were receding in most parts of the world”. In 19th century England cholera claimed close to 0.2 million lives.
Tumbe claims that 13 million people perished in plague pandemics between 1894 and 1920, 12 million of which on the Indian subcontinent. He writes: “The plague rarely troubled Europeans in general or even Indians in the army, in regions otherwise susceptible to outbreaks, presumably because of better dwelling structures”. He documents plague-related death rates in Bombay between 1897 and 1900 for British India: 2 per 1000 for Europeans, around 10 per 1000 for Parsis, Jews and Eurasians, 15 per 1000 among Hindu ‘Brahmans’ and 20 per 1000 for ‘other Hindu castes’. The fact that most Indians died at a 10 times higher rate than their European overlords suggests that British colonial rule had enormous responsibility for the 12 million victims of plague pandemics on the subcontinent. Europe reported only around 1000 victims during this plague pandemic.
According to Tumbe the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920 killed over 40 million people around the world and “close to or upwards of 20 million” on the Indian subcontinent, 6.4 percent of its population at the time. He quotes a report on death rates in Bombay City: “Europeans and Parsis had the lowest rates of death related to influenza (about 1 percent of their populations), the death rates were more than double among Muslims and ‘Caste Hindus’ and more than six times as high among ‘Low Caste Hindus’”. In the Punjab the sanitation board noted that the “case mortality in Europeans was well under 5 percent, in Indians of the better class and those provided with qualified medical aid about 6 percent, in the poorer classes anything from 50 percent onwards”. The case fatality ratio in the Indian army was 4 percent for Europeans, but 11 percent for natives. Indian politicians and newspapers voiced harsh criticism of colonial neglect of Indian health care during the pandemic and made desperate pleas for greater help. Tumbe writes about the response: “Not only did the pleas have little effect, in later years the abysmally low spending on public health care was further cut back amid efforts to reduce government expenditures”.
To be clear: According to Tumbe’s research over 70 million Indians died from cholera, plague and influenza alone under British rule. Even though it is clear that colonial rule bears a lot of responsibility for this horrific death toll, it would be wrong to blame British rule for all of the victims. In this analysis I blame the colonizers for a much lower number of victims. I do so for the following reasons:
– Tumbe shows that geographical conditions in India also played an important role. However, his comparisons of death rates for Europeans in India and Natives does suggest a limited role for geography, since they all shared the same natural environment.
– Tumbe also shows that British help was totally inadequate. But there were some improvements in some areas over time.
– Both Tumbe and Maharatna document in great detail that malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy and abysmal sanitary conditions explain the high death rates for cholera, plague and influenza. Maharatna shows that many victims of the great famines died from cholera and plague. So we need to be very careful when adding the cholera and plague numbers to famine numbers in order to avoid double counting. Even though, Maharatna documents that the number one cause of death during most of the famines was malaria. Starvation and other diseases also contributed to the high death tolls. Tumbe discusses the devastating cholera epidemic of 1857-1858 and documents high death rates from plague for many years after the horrific famine era, which ended in 1902. For all of these cholera and plague deaths we need to be much less concerned about double counting.
– In this analysis I only count victims of famines or epidemics, if the government’s responsibility is very clear and direct.
For all of these reasons I believe it is fair to say that British colonial rule caused at least 5 million out of roughly 50 million total deaths from cholera and plague on the subcontinent. I choose 9 million as the most plausible estimate.
The impact of the influenza epidemic of 1918 on India is an underestimated issue. It killed less than 0.7 percent of the British population, but 5 percent of the Indian population. Roughly 13.9 million Indians died in the British controlled territories. Most of this difference probably needs to be explained by poverty, lack of health care and sanitation in the Raj. The much lower death rate in Britain compared to British India shows what the British authorities were capable of. Maura Elizabeth Chhun from Metropolitan State University summarizes the results of her PhD from 2015 called “Death and Disorder – The 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic in British India” in the following way: “The 1918-1919 Influenza pandemic claimed millions of lives around the world, including some 12-14 million in India. The British colonial government found itself facing a previously unimaginable public health crisis while also fighting the First World War and staring down an approaching famine. Without an effective cure for the flu and with only an overstretched and understaffed bureaucracy to fight it, the British government managed only small, largely ineffectual steps to mitigate the flu’s immense death toll. Issues of power, racism, and colonial control intersected with structural deficiencies and a well founded, deep seated distrust of government intervention on the part of the Indian people during the pandemic. In the aftermath many people questioned the government’s response, and the flu began to be used in anticolonialist rhetoric as an indictment of the British presence”. In her article for The Conversation from April 2020 called: “1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians, and British overlords’ indifference strengthened the anti-colonial movement” she writes that Europeans in British India had a death rate of roughly 0.8 percent, but Hindus and Muslims had death rates that ranged from 1.8 to 6.2 percent.
If we assume that 40 percent of the excess mortality in India was caused by British politics, the remaining increase would still have been more than four times higher than in Britain. This makes it a reasonable assumption. It means that British colonial policies were responsible for roughly 5.5 million excess deaths from influenza in India. Plausible estimates range from 4 to 10 million excess deaths. We do not have to worry about double counting of famine and influenza victims, because we didn’t count any famine deaths for 1918-1920.
Plausible estimates for the number of victims of British rule in India range from 33.4 to 100 million and more. I consider 57.2 million victims of British rule in India to be the most reasonable estimate.
This analysis is only concerned with British culpability for clearly identifiable famines and epidemics. It does not include excess mortality from British rule in “normal” times. I have not included the excess mortality in “normal” times for any of the other mass atrocities either. But I do believe that British rule in India lead to millions of excess deaths which are not counted in this analysis. Famines and epidemics were only the most extreme and easily identifiable manifestations of British misrule. I only point this out here, because I believe that my estimate of over 50 million victims of British colonialism on the subcontinent is conservative. Most authors use lower numbers because their analysis misses many famines and epidemics. For example, Matthew White blames Britain for 26.6 million famine deaths, not including the Bengal famine of World War II. But his analysis is limited to the famine of 1769-1770 and the famines between 1876 and 1900, because Mike Davis’ book is his main source.
Shashi Tharoor’s powerful book “Inglorious Empire – What the British did to India” contains evidence for British colonialism’s long-term negative impact on health, education and living standards on the Indian subcontinent. Economist Jeffrey G. Williamson’s fact-filled book “Trade and Poverty – When the Third World Fell Behind” contains a chapter on India, in which he convincingly shows that British misrule in India was one of the main causes for a severe de-industrialization process between 1760 and 1913. In his pioneering book “Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia did not” historian Prasannan Parthasarathi documents in great detail how British policies led to a stark decline of manufacturing, technological knowledge, education and government welfare on the Indian subcontinent.
Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel wrote a study called “Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century”, in which they calculate the number of excess deaths for British India between 1891 and 1920. They conclude: “If we estimate excess mortality from 1891 to 1920, with the average death rate of the 1880s as normal mortality, we find some 50 million people lost their lives under the aegis of British capitalism. But this estimate must be considered conservative. India’s 1880s death rate was already very high by international standards”. Based on a lower normal mortality rate, which is based on speculative assumptions, the authors get to much higher numbers. All available data suggests that 100 years of British conquest, warfare and deindustrialization had already increased the mortality rate on the Indian subcontinent by 1880, perhaps dramatically so. That’s why I agree that 50 million excess deaths is a conservative estimate for the 30 years of colonial rule from 1891 to 1920. This number also suggests that my own estimate of roughly 60 million victims of British colonial rule on the subcontinent is reasonable