natural disasters and indian history

Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 43 (2014) 175e192186

statements about the ‘worst’ summers and ‘most dire’ dearthswould have been avoided. Those seeking a general history of theperiod will not find one in Global Crisiswhich is, by the nature of itsthesis, too attentive to climatic lines of causation. Yet it would bechurlish to end on a negative note, for it is hard to imagine whoother than Geoffrey Parker would have the scholarly range to tietogether seventeenth-century political and environmental historyafter this fashion for the entire globe. All will learn much from thisbook, even though each of its intended audiences will suffer someresidual frustrations as well.

Robert J. MayhewUniversity of Bristol, UK

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2013.10.017

Tirthankar Roy, Natural Disasters and Indian History. . Oxford IndiaShort Introductions. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2012,xii þ 165 pages, £7.99 paperback.

The Indian subcontinent lies on a highly active geological marginand is subject to extreme meteorological conditions. Cyclonesduring the summer months have the potential for significantsocioeconomic effects e witness the mass evacuation inresponse to Cyclone Mahasen in May 2013 e and the monsoon issubject to periodic failures. Such natural disasters have occurredthroughout India’s history, but the responses to them have beenneglected in the history of the subcontinent. This is a significantoversight, as, while determinism should be avoided, the historyof India cannot be understood outside its environmental context.Furthermore, the historical record can help to direct futurepolicy responses and reduce the chance that previous mistakesare repeated.

Attempts to reverse the neglect of environmental historyform the subject of a new Oxford India Short Introduction Nat-ural Disasters and Indian History by Tirthankar Roy of the LondonSchool of Economics and Political Science. Roy examines thedevelopment of institutional disaster response during colonialgovernance in India, beginning with the Bengal famine of 1771and ending with the Quetta earthquake of 1935. The book drawsout three scales of response that are common to nearly all di-sasters, through the examination of case studies of major his-torical famines, cyclones, and earthquakes. The first scale ofresponse covers a period of weeks or months and comprises achaotic period of breakdown in state control. The second is therebuilding phase, spanning years and concerned with politicsand cooperation. The third is a decadal process, which comprisesthe gradual accumulation of preventative knowledge over alonger time period.

While not an apologist for colonialism, Roy argues against theovertly anti-imperial discourse found in many environmental andfamine histories (see Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts: El NiñoFamines and the Making of the Third World (London, 2001) or RohanD’Souza’s ‘Drowned and Dammed’: Colonial Capitalism and FloodControl in Eastern India (New Delhi, 2006)). Such narratives, Royargues, can oversimplify the complex issues of protection, insur-ance, collaboration, location, politics, and economics that drivedecision making in disaster response. For example, the firstresponse to disasters is categorised by ‘unregulated, anarchic andpredatory’ markets. Previous narratives have attributed this to thecolonial state’s laissez faire response which, conveniently, absolvedit from responsibility for coping with disaster. However, Roy cau-tions against such a simplistic reading, suggesting that colonial

state had inadequate financial and infrastructural capacitycompared with other colonial countries. This lack of capacity alsohampered the second scale of disaster response, that of rebuilding.Such a process involved the creation of new legislation and assetsand relied on collaboration between local communities andindigenous rulers e something which was not always straightfor-ward. For example, flood embankments were the main item ofinvestment in public works by the government of Bengal during the1830s, but by the 1850s the government had almost entirelyretreated from flood defence after difficulties of cooperation withlocal landlords (zamindars).

The major success of colonial disaster response, Roy argues, wasin addressing the information deficit that was central to the failuresin the first two scales of response. Famines in the Deccan in the latenineteenth century led to the creation of the famine codes, whicheventually led to the development of famine earlywarning systems.Railways, canals, and widespread media were also established inorder to introduce greater information into the market and buffergrain price shocks. Predictive science, a key constituent ofcontemporary disaster management, grew out of a drive to un-derstand the causes for natural disasters. The Indian GeologicalSurvey was formed after the devastating 1819 earthquake inKachchh. The IndianMeteorological Department has its roots in theobservations and analyses of Henry Piddington during the first halfof the nineteenth century, in response to repeated cyclones’damaging shipping in the Bay of Bengal.

Roy’s balanced approach and avoidance of simplistic narrativesis to be commended, since a narrow focus on the failures of colo-nialism can contribute little to disaster responses in the future.However, at times he gives the colonial state an easy ride. Forexample, the failure of famine relief camps towards the end of thenineteenth century is attributed by Roy to their location in majorurban centres and their policy of feeding anyone who could work,factors which meant that support went largely to fairly healthypeople. This is may be true, but it ignores the experiments with theTemple Wage outlined by Mike Davis, whereby workers in thecamps were fed far less thanwas necessary to keep them alive (LateVictorian Holocausts, pp. 38e40). Roy also asserts that the railwayswere wholly beneficial in disaster response, an assertion that hasbeen contested by B.M. Bhatia (Famines in India: a Study in SomeAspects of the Economic History of India, 1860e1945 (London 1963)pp. 9e10) and Mike Davis (Late Victorian Holocausts, pp. 26e27)amongst others.

Roy’s prose is clear and his arguments balanced and detailed,although his arguments are developed from a narrow selection ofcase studies and this leads to a few minor errors. The book wouldconstitute a valuable addition to any undergraduate or post-graduate reading list for courses on India’s development and his-torical geography, and should be recommended to anyone with aninterest in the (post)colonial or economic history of the Indiansubcontinent. Roy’s book provides not just the first systematicoverview of natural disasters in Indian history, but an argument fora new discipline of the history of natural disasters that moves awayfrom political criticism and towards informing policy. It is hopedthat this Short Introductionwill serve not just as an introduction tothe subject, but also to a new research drive better to understandthe history and trajectory of disaster response in the Indiansubcontinent.

George AdamsonKing’s College London, UK

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2013.10.018