European University Institute Library

An imperial disaster, the Bengal cyclone of 1876, Benjamin Kingsbury

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

maps

index present

non fiction

An imperial disaster

electronic resource

dictionariesbibliography

1088715574

Benjamin Kingsbury

Oxford scholarship online.

the Bengal cyclone of 1876

The storm came on the night of 31 October. It was a full moon, & the tides were at their peak; the great rivers of eastern Bengal were flowing high & fast to the sea. In the early hours the inhabitants of the coast & islands were overtaken by an immense wave from the Bay of Bengal - a wall of water that reached a height of 40 feet in some places. The wave swept away everything in its path, drowning around 215,000 people. At least another 100,000 died in the cholera epidemic & famine that followed. It was the worst calamity of its kind in recorded history. Such events are often described as 'natural disasters'. This text turns that interpretation on its head, showing that the cyclone of 1876 was not simply a 'natural' event, but one shaped by all-too-human patterns of exploitation & inequality - by divisions within Bengali society, & the enormous disparities of political & economic power that characterized British rule.--, Provided by publisher

specialized