The Estuary

A history of environmental, economic, and social change in the Meghna estuary from the late eighteenth century to the 1870s. A new frontier of alluvial land was being created along the edge of the Bay of Bengal, presenting opportunities for profit as well as great risks. The settlement of this frontier was not simply a natural outcome of the availability of new land: it was also encouraged by imperial policy. And just as British rule was not a product of nature, neither were the divisions within Bengali society that helped to determine who would be exposed to disaster.

Epilogue

The young woman, a prostitute, is crying: there is nothing left, the storm has swept everything away. She lifts her voice to Narayana, the preserver, ‘the one who rests on water’, who in the great flood that covered heaven, earth, and hell, took the form of a child and floated to safety on a banyan leaf....

The Aftermath

The government’s policy on providing loans and land revenue remissions after the cyclone further strengthened the landlords’ position. Sir Richard Temple’s misjudgment about the amount of relief needed resulted in a famine in Chittagong, while Romesh Dutt successfully handled a similar scarcity on the other side of the estuary. The maintenance of law and order in the cyclone-affected districts remained of great concern to the government, though it was reluctant to acknowledge a link between crime and deprivation caused by the cyclone. In the end, no measures were taken to prevent such a calamity from happening again.

The Response

The first part considers the official relief effort following the intervention of the lieutenant governor of Bengal, Sir Richard Temple. Temple’s instructions to local officials were framed in strict free trade terms, their aim being to minimize interference with the market and restrict government spending. Temple sought to justify this response by reference to the situation on the ground, but was badly mistaken as to how far the cyclone-affected areas could recover without government help. The second part examines responses to the cyclone by other groups, including missionaries, landlords, the middle-class public, and the Bengali press.

The Forest

A history of the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bakarganj, on the western edge of the Meghna estuary. By 1876 much of this forest had disappeared. The deforestation of the Sundarbans was driven by an imperial idea of “improvement” and the government’s ever-increasing hunger for land revenue. In the course of the nineteenth century the government became aware of the Sundarbans’ role in reducing cyclone damage, but did nothing to preserve the remaining forest in Bakarganj. Many of those who drowned in the storm-wave were living on land that had until recently been forested.

The Epidemic

The inadequacy of the government’s disaster relief directly contributed to the terrible cholera epidemic that followed the storm. A lack of food, clean water, and shelter had left the people of the cyclone-affected districts highly susceptible to disease. Officials blamed the people themselves for the situation, and to some extent religious and caste prejudices about the disposal of bodies had made conditions worse. The medical response to the epidemic was late and poorly organized. Although there was no effective treatment for cholera, a better-resourced response might at least have slowed the spread of disease.

The Cyclone

The first part follows news of the disaster as it reached the British district officers. Officials in Bakarganj recommended that the government make a substantial contribution to relief, but their views were discounted by higher-ranking officials outside the district who favored minimal government intervention. In Noakhali and Chittagong, on the other hand, a policy of minimal relief was adopted from the beginning. The second part describes the disaster’s immediate effects. Far from being a social leveler, the impact of the cyclone was distributed along lines of class, occupation, sex, and age.