Top

Journal of Quantitative Economics

Published in:

13-11-2017 | Original Article

Agricultural Fluctuations and Demographic Crisis in British India (1820–1870): A Case Study

Authors: Panchanan Das, Amiya Kumar Bagchi

Published in: Journal of Quantitative Economics | Issue 3/2018

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

This paper relates mortality crises in India to harvest fluctuations. It is difficult to quantify the intensity of famines accurately during the period 1820–1870 because of the lack of relevant data. The contribution of the paper is to relate demographic crises to harvest fluctuations in two macro-regions of India and to do it by using data from an early period of British rule. In the process, it also tackles certain revisionist views that have been forwarded in recent times.

previous article A Two-Sector Model of Creative Capital Driven Regional Economic Growth

next article Partially Altruistic Choice in Presence of Consensus Bias

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Bagchi (1992) studied peasant insecurity caused by the British land taxation system covering the four Bombay Deccan districts of Ahmadnagar, Poona, Bijapur and Sholapur over the period from the 1820s to the 1880s.

By carrying out Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test we have found that the time series of acreage follow a stochastic trend. Detailed empirical results are not produced here, but can be obtained from the author on request.

\(R_{McF}^2 =1-\frac{LLF_{ur} }{LLF_r }\), where LLF\(_{ur}\) is the unrestricted log likelihood function where all regressors are included in the model and LLF\(_{r}\) is the restricted log likelihood function where only the intercept is included in the model.

Burgess and Donaldson (2012) are slightly wrong about the date: a major famine with excess mortality ranging between 2, 148, 788 and and 3,218,776 occurred in 1907–1908 (Maharatna 1996, p. 15).

Abul, Fazl Allámi. 1873–1907. The Aíni Akbari, vol. II, translated from the original Persian, by H. Blochmann, M.A. and Colonel H. S. Jarret. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society.

Bagchi, A.K. 1976. Deindustrialization in India in the Nineteenth Century: Some Theoretical Implications. Journal of Development Studies 12: 135–64.CrossRef

Bagchi, A.K. 1982. Money and Credit As Areas of Conflict in Colonial India

Bagchi, A.K. 1992. Land Tax, Property Rights and Peasant Insecurity in Colonial India. The Journal of Peasant Studies 20 (1): 1–49.CrossRef

Bagchi, A.K. 2005. Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Bagchi, A.K. 2010. Colonialism and Indian Economy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Bandopadhyay, A. 1992. The Agrarian Economy of Tamil Nadu 1820–1855. Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi & Company.

Bhattacharya, D. 1985. Historical Demography in India-Scope, Source and Materials and Some Crucial Problems in Outline. Paper presented in the Symposium on Historical Demography in India, Bangalore, 1985.

Burgess, Robin, and Dave Donaldson. 2012. Railroads and the demise of famines in India. http://dave-donaldson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Burgess_Donaldson_Volatility_Paper.pdf. Accessed 22 May 2017.

Chandra, B. 1968. Reinterpretation of nineteenth century Indian economic history. Indian Economic and Social History Review 5: 35–75.CrossRef

Chaudhuri, K. N. 1983. Foreign trade and balance of payments (1757–1947). In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II: c. 1757–1970, eds. Dharma Kumar and Meghnad Desai, 804–877. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Deyell, John S. 2010. Cowries and coins: The dual monetary system of the Bengal Sultanate. Indian Economic and Social History Review 47 (1): 63–106.CrossRef

Ghosh, Arun. 1984. Price movements and fluctuations in economic activity (1860–1947): A review of McAlpin’s contribution to CEHI. Social Scientist 12 (12): 31–42.CrossRef

Guha, Sumit. 1985. The Agrarian Economy of the Bombay Deccan, 1818–1941. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Guha, Sumit. 1986. Review of Subject To Famine, by M. B. McAlpin. Indian Economic and Social History Review 23: 237–39.CrossRef

Guha, Sumit. 1991. Mortality decline in the early twentieth century India: A preliminary enquiry. Indian Economic and Social History Review 28: 371–91.CrossRef

Guilmoto, Christophe Z. 1992. Towards a new demographic equilibrium: The inception of demographic transition in south India. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 29 (3): 247–289.CrossRef

Habib, Irfan. 2014. The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556–1707, 3rd ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Haider, Najaf. 2015. Fractional pieces and non-metallic monies in medieval India (1200–1750). In Money in Asia (1200–1900): Small Currencies in Social and Political Context, ed. Jane Kate Leonard, and Ulrich Theobald, 86–107. Leiden: Brill.CrossRef

Hufton, Olwen. 1974. The Poor of Eighteenth-century France, 1750–1789. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kumar, Ravinder. 1968. Western India in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Livi-Bacci, M. 1991. Population and Nutrition: An Essay on European Demographic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Ludden, David (ed.). 2005. Agricultural Production and Indian History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Maharatna, Arup. 1996. The Demography of Indian Famines: An Indian Historical Perspective. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Mokyr, Joel. 1983. Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800–1850. London: Allen & Unwin.

Mukherjee, Aditya. 2010. Empire: How colonial India made modern Britain. E conomic and Political Weekly, XLV 50: 73–82.

O’Grada, Cormac. 1994. Ireland : A New Economic History1780-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Raychaudhuri, T. 1968. Re-interpretation of nineteenth cenrury Indian economic history. Indian Economic and Social History Review 5: 77–100.CrossRef

Strulik, Holger. 1999. On Demographic Transition, Structural Change, and Economic Growth and Stagnation. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.55.510&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Accessed 18 June 2016.

Studer, Roman. 2008. India and the great divergence: Assessing the efficiency of grain markets in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India. The Journal of Economic History 68 (2): 393–437.CrossRef

Visaria, Leela, and Pravin Visaria. 1983. Population 1757–1947. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 2, ed. Dharma Kumar, and Meghnad Desai, 463–532. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ward, Kerry. 2015. Ébbs and flows in the Indian Ocean. In Asia Inside Out, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo, Henry F. Hsiu, and Peter C. Perdue, 163–185. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Title: Agricultural Fluctuations and Demographic Crisis in British India (1820–1870): A Case Study
Authors: Panchanan Das
Amiya Kumar Bagchi
Publication date: 13-11-2017
Publisher: Springer India
Published in: Journal of Quantitative Economics / Issue 3/2018
Print ISSN: 0971-1554
Electronic ISSN: 2364-1045
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40953-017-0112-5

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Other articles of this Issue 3/2018

Gender Differences in Health Expenditure of Rural Cancer Patients: Evidence from a Public Tertiary Care Facility in India

Costing for Elevation in Development Expenditure: Illustrative Evidence from India

Quantifying the Landlocked Trade Penalty using Structural Gravity

Partially Altruistic Choice in Presence of Consensus Bias

Performance and Persistence in Performance of Actively Managed Chinese Equity Funds

Forecasting Inflation Rate: Professional Against Academic, Which One is More Accurate