ABSTRACT
The copious literature on famines in colonial South Asia demonstrates that neither their frequency nor the colonial, Indian, or international activities undertaken in response to famines can be explained without flexible scales of analysis that examine the transnational and global influences on anti-famine policies. This chapter provides an overview of colonial, philanthropic, and international humanitarian famine relief from the middle of the nineteenth century to Indian independence and points out that the history of famines in colonial South Asia is also – but not exclusively – a history of the growing interconnectedness of the region.
