An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

The British tended to base their refusal to intervene in famines with adequate governmental measures on a combination of three sets of considerations: free trade principles (do not interfere with market forces), Malthusian doctrine (growth in population beyond the ability of the land to sustain it would inevitably lead to deaths, thereby restoring the ‘correct’ level of population) and financial prudence (don’t spend money we haven’t budgeted for). On these grounds, Britain had not intervened to save lives in Ireland, or prevent emigration to America, during the famine there. In the mid-nineteenth century, as Dinyar Patel points out, ‘it was common economic wisdom that government intervention in famines was unnecessary and even harmful. The market would restore a proper balance. Any excess deaths, according to Malthusian principles, were nature’s way of responding to overpopulation’.