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‘THE LAW OF STORMS’: EUROPEAN AND INDIGENOUS RESPONSES TO NATURAL DISASTERS IN COLONIAL INDIA, c. 1800–1850
Author(s) -
Roy Tirthankar
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
australian economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.493
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1467-8446
pISSN - 0004-8992
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8446.2009.00269.x
Subject(s) - storm , indigenous , natural disaster , levee , colonialism , intervention (counseling) , tropical cyclone , winter storm , political science , geography , law , meteorology , cartography , ecology , psychology , biology , psychiatry
Focusing on collective response to storms and floods in early colonial India, the paper explores obstacles to successful disaster response with one example related to meteorology of cyclones and the other the use of embankments. In both these examples, there was an attempt to build public‐private partnerships, which succeeded in the case of weather prediction and failed in river embankment. The failure is explained by two factors. Coordination and contracting were costly when the private partners had variable capacities and interests. Furthermore, whereas meteorology predicted nature, embankments interfered with nature, an intervention which carried social and economic costs.