The British Empire: A source for good or evil? February 2014 | Page 24

The diseases in the British Empire
Topic: People in the colonies had no resistance to the diseases. The British brought with them many died.
This needs to be countered with the fact that the British also brought new medical advances to colonies.

In the XIXth century, the British people arrived in the colonies. They brought their
knowledge: education, railways, clean water... But they also brought their diseases.

The diseases for the native people.
-The plague, was first in Great Britain, then came in all British Empire when the colons arrived.
It was a big problem for the colonized people
because their body wasn't immunized.
The railway system that the British introduced
to India in the 1850s allowed for the plague to
spread quickly through the country (Hansi,
Marwar, Bombay, Prune, Calcutta, Karachi),
especially among the native population. The
plague is very contagious, it is a horrible disease
and the symptom wasn't known by the Indian
people.
Doc 1: A bubonic plague victim in India (http://thirdplaguepandemic.wikispaces.com)
It devastated almost the whole of India until about 1899. The deadly epidemic killed 2 million
people: it was a big tragedy for the population.

- Moreover since several centuries, the India is victim of the famine.
There were food shortages and the population was hungry. But the
18th and 19th centuries saw the worst famine. The famine was a
product of British economic and administrative policies. The British
people took the harvest (opium, rice, indigo, cotton...) of the India
people who didn’t have enough to eat.
Doc 2 : The localization of the famine
(http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk)