The changes that take place in India after the areas administered by the East India Company are assumed by the Crown. The army is restructured in an attempt to prevent future mutinies. A series of famines occurs and question arise about how to prevent or lessen their impact.

1. Government and Economy of
IndiaRaj Bhavan
Calcutta
India Office end of
Foreign Office
London
1866

2. Technology and the Revolt
• Railroads
• Telegraph (Field telegraph)
• Weapons
The Enfield Pattern 1853 musket-rifle

3. Railroads used in 1857-58

4. Victims of the Rebellion
• 2,392 recorded British soldiers
• 1000 to 1500 civilians
• Unknown number of Anglo-Indians, Christian
Indians, Indians who worked for the British
• 8,000 sepoys by one estimate

5. Fate of Bengal Regiments
Outcome
Mutinied 48
Disarmed or dispersed 23
Loyal 3
Loyal portions of regiments that were disbanded
or mutinied were joined into new regiments.
The 66th Goorkha Regiment became the 1st Goorkha
Regiment which survives as the 1 Gorkha Rifles of the
Indian Army.

6. Other areas
Madras
– One regiment refused to serve in Bengal
– No mutinies
Bombay
– Three regiments mutiny

7. Blame the Company
Sir Colin is Colin Campbell,
noted for the relief of the
British in Lucknow
An accompanying poem
blames the clerks of the
Company for interfering
with his campaign.

8. East India Company
Victim of the Rebellion
1858 Government of India act
– Territories in India to be vested in the Queen
– Secretary of State for India with 15 member council
– Crown appoints Governor-general
– Set up a civil service
– All property of the EIC transferred to the Crown
1873 Dissolution of the Company

9. Government of India Act 1858
• Single chain of command in Army
• Commitment to public works
• Restrict the powers and composition of the new
advisory Council of India
• New Secretary of State for India
– Governor-General (Viceroy)

10. Crown Prerogatives
• Crown to see all dispatches
relating to India
• All government proclamations in
India be made in Victoria's name
Punch, September 11, 1858

11. Victoria’s Proclamation
• Respect for treaties with local princes
• No extension of territories
• Equal protection of all religions
• Positions open to all qualified subjects
• Regard for customary land rights
• Clemency to all except those who killed British
• Promote Works of Public Utility and Improvement

12. Clemency of
Canning

13. The Most Exalted Order of the Star of
India
• Knighthood for Indian
princes and British
administrators in India
• Founded 1861 by
Victoria
– Include:
– Prince Albert
– Prince of Wales

14. Changes in Emphasis: Canals
• Before 1857
– Protect revenue producing lands
– Irrigation
• After 1857
– Transport

15. New India Army
• Retain separate Presidency armies under
Commander-in-Chief of Bengal Army
• Integrate European infantry into Royal Army
• Separate frontier forces
– Sindh Frontier Force: Punjab Frontier Force
• “Bombay system” [next week]

16. Composition of Infantry
Bengal Madras Bombay Other Total
1857
British 37,000
Native 112,100 42,400 33,900 198.400
1863
British 65,000
Native 49,000 34,000 29,000 28,000 140,000
Distribution estimated
1859 Peel report recommends 2:1 native to British in Bengal; 3:1 elsewhere

17. ‘White Mutiny’ in the European Army
• Sign on a wash house wall
"John Company is dead. We will not soldier fοr the
Queen.”
• Units at Dinapur mutiny
– Ringleader executed
– Others offered discharge
• May 24, 1859 Madras Fusiliers refuse to cheer on
Queen’s birthday

18. White mutineers
• Out of ~16,000
– 10,116 men returned home
– 2,809 re-enlisted in England

19. Railroads used in 1857-58

20. Rail System
1871
1850s: Connect ports
To 1869: Private firms with
public guarantees
1869 Some government
construction
After 1880 Government
ownership

21. Growth of the Rail System

22. 1881 India Factory Act
This act applied to factories using mechanical
powers, employing not less than 100 workers and
working for not more than 4 months in a year
• Prohibits employment of Children below 7 years
was prohibited
• Children, age of 7 to 12, limited to 9 hours/ day.
• Mid-day meal interval, four holidays/ month and
fencing of machinery in the factory also required.

23. Government 1869-70

24. India: Agriculture, Late 19th century
• Overall India produced a surplus of food
• Agrarian economy could be characterized as a
non-monetized exchange economy.
• For a large part of the population, food supply
depended on employment
• Crop failures were local
Ghose, Ajit Kumar. "Food supply and starvation: a study of famines with
reference to the Indian sub-continent." Oxford Economic Papers 34.2
(1982): 368-389

25. 1866 Orissa Famine
"Such visitations of providence as these no
government can do much either to prevent or
alleviate,"
“If I were to attempt to do this [regulate prices in
violation of the laws of economics] I should
consider myself no better than a dacoit or thief.”
Cecil Beacon, Governor of Bengal

26. Famine Relief − Orissa
Response
• Reduce taxes and military
spending
• Reject irrigation projects
Late response
• Import 10,000 tons of rice
• Import 40,000 tons in
anticipation of 1867
– Half unused
Results
• 4 to 5 million deaths in a
population of 47 million
• Cost 9.5 million rupees

27. Bihar 1873-74
The Illustrated London
News. 24 January 1874

28. Bihar (and Bengal) Famine of 1873-4
• Sir Richard Temple imports rice from
Burma
• Work made available to build roads and
in Burma to build a railroad
• More rice imported than is needed
• Temple is criticized for his excess
expenditure. Leads to future caution
• Government of India accuses Madras of
doing too much.

29. Great Famine of 1876–78
• (also the Southern India famine of 1876–78 or
the Madras famine of 1877)
• Affected area 670,000 square kilometres
(257,000 sq mi)
• 5.5 million deaths out of population of 58.5
million

30. Drought and its Consequences
• Madras rainfall
– Average 27,6 inches
– 1876 rainfall 6.3 inches
• Many areas unaffected
• Overall effect
– Lack of money
– Lack of work
– Not lack of food

31. Grain for export stacked in Madras beaches (February 1877)

32. Exports in the Midst of Famine

33. Relief camps
• Workers given “Temple wage”
– A pound of grain plus one anna (1/16 of a rupee)
(1 ¼ d)
• Later increased by efforts of Dr. Cornish to 1 ½
pound supplemented by protein

34. India’s Nero
• Weeklong feast for 68,000
officials and maharajas to
celebrate the newly
acclaimed Empress of India
• 100,000 peasants die in the
period according to a British
journalist
Lord Edward Robert
Bulwer-Lytton

35. Relief
• Relief in India 2% of amount spent on poor in Britain
• Work camps but strict rules for relief
– Strikes
– Should relief be given to men who refused to work?
“We say that human life shall be saved at any cost and
effort’; and íf ít is asked what ‘the general principles are by
which the District officers should be guided in refusing the
aid needed to preserve life, the reply must be that there
are no such principles, and that there are no circumstances
¡n which such aid can be refused.”

36. Effects
• About 5.5 million deaths
• Two phases
I. Main causes of death were cholera, dysentery and
smallpox triggered by migration, unsanitary
conditions and close contact in camps and relief
works, and consumption of decayed foods.
II. Malaria on return of monsoons

37. Monthly total of deaths by cause, Madras 1876–8.
Source: Annual Reports of the Sanitary Commissioner of Madras, 1876–8

38. Extent of famine

39. Some views in official London
"[E]very benevolent attempt made to mitigate the
effects of famine and defective sanitation serves but to
enhance the evils resulting from overpopulation”
Sir Evelyn Baring, finance minister
“80% of the famine mortality were drawn from the
poorest 20% of the population …. Thus, if the
government spent more of its revenue on famine relief,
an even larger proportion of the population would
become penurious.”
1881 Report

40. Famine Commission
• Examine roles of
– Early provision of relief employment
– Irrigation
– Transport and communications
– Improvement in agriculture
• Conclusion in dissent
“The complete break-down that occurred in the last famine
was but a repetition, on a larger scale, of the failure which
has characterized the administration of every Indian famine
in this century, with the single exception of that in 1874.”

41. English Ideologies
• Laissez-Faire economics
• Malthusian population theory
• Social Darwinism
• Fear of the slippery slope of welfare dependence
Adopted by some
contemporary
Indian sources.

42. Principles for relief
• Employment for able-bodied at sufficient wages
• ‘Gratuitous relief’ to those unable to work
• Landowners: Suspension of land taxes
• Need to have a surplus in good years of
£1,500,000 to prepare for the inevitable
reoccurrence of famines and £500,000 for other
contingencies

43. Recommendations
• Famine Insurance Fund
• Budget of 500,000 pounds for railway
construction and general public works. 250,000
pounds for irrigation projects
• Strengthen department of meteorology
• Storage (but caution about spoilage)
• Famine code for uniformity

44. Famine Code of 1883
• Subsequent codes of 1897 and 1900,
• Public policy for
(1) the transportation of grain to areas under famine
conditions, provision of food in exchange for work
relief to the able-bodied;
(2) Guidelines for famine relief;
(3) The construction of protective railways, and
(4) the further expansion of irrigation works

45. Indian Civil Service
1853 Government of India Act replaced nomination
with an open competitive exam for entry into the
Company training college at Halleybury
1858 Direct entry into ICS by competion
• Expectation that top positions would go to best
graduates of Cambridge and Oxford
• Opposition to exam: Positions should go to
English gentlemen

46. Satyendranath Tagore (1842-1923)
• Early education at home
including Sanskrit and
English
• Higher education at Hindu
School of Calcutta
• 1857 Passed exam at
University of Calcutta

47. Satyendranath Tagore
• 1862 Goes to England to take the competitive
exam
• Passes and is hired in 1864
• Authorities lower the weight of Sanskrit and
Arabic in scoring the exam
• Satyendranath becomes a judge, writer and
advocate of the emancipation of women

48. Examination
• First part based on liberal University education
• Second part, following a probationary period, on
law and Indian languages

49. 1863 Exam
• Tagore places 43rd out of 189 competitors; 6th in
second exam
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