population, it just needed to be moved to the right areas. But instead the rail system, obedient to market logic, was used by merchants to ship grain from the hinterlands into central depots where it could be guarded from the hungry and shipped to Europe. Financial speculation on the London Stock Exchange was driving food prices to eye-watering heights, and grain merchants were eager to take advantage of this. In 1877 and 1878, during the worst years of the first drought, they shipped a record 6.4 million tons of Indian wheat to Europe rather than relieve starvation in India. During the period
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