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How did British officers live in the scorching heat of India?
- acd10j 7y agoWhy so much concern of British officers in India, Better question would be how did common Indian population survived British Raj, when American Native populations did not.
- 0xB31B1B 7y agoIndian populations had immunity to diseases that American natives did not.
- sct202 7y agoNative Americans had no exposure or resistance to smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, typhoid, tuberculosis, etc etc. There are a lot of accounts of cities and towns being completely depopulated very rapidly during the early colonial period just from disease before there was large scale immigration to the Americas from the old world.
- smnrchrds 7y agoFollow-up question: why did the disease exchange only affect native Americans. Why didn't the colonists perish due to contact with deadly American diseases they had no exposure or resistance to? Why were the European diseases so deadly to Americans, but not vice versa?
- stevedt 7y agoWhile not everyone is a fan of Jared Diamond, see: https://www.enotes.com/topics/guns-germs-steel https://www.enotes.com/topics/guns-germs-steel Infectious diseases often arise when humans live in large groups with their animals from which a lot of the diseases originate.
- iguy 7y agoThis was less likely for two reasons. First, the old world had dense concentrations of people for much longer, which domesticated many different diseases, making them childhood annoyances. And second, we spent much longer living in Africa, and co-evolved with diseases like malaria, which but left these behind when emigrating via Alaska. (Edit: I forgot syphilis, which is a likely candidate for a new-world disease. But certainly there were fewer.) East-west contact within Eurasia of course did bring some serious diseases to the West, to which people had no resistance. Plague in the 14thC, cholera in the 19th. (Did any similar diseases arrive in the East? I can't think of any.)
- rhcom2 7y agoInteresting question. I found this: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-americans-didnt-wipe-europeans-diseases/ http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-ameri... Fun tidbit: > But contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t all one sided. It’s believed that one Native American disease did slip on to the European ships and sailed onward to Europe doing some major damage in the process. That disease was syphilis.
- BerislavLopac 7y agoIt is one theory, but things are not completely clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis#Origin
- rb808 7y agoSyphilis was taken back to Europe and killed millions.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoFor one thing, there are accounts of Europeans deliberately exposing the natives to diseases. It wasn't just a natural unfortunate occurance.
- nemo 7y agoThere are plural accounts, but there is only a single documented case historians have evidence for of the British at Fort Pitt deliberately using infected items from their infirmary.
- quindecagon 7y agoI wonder how they thought of it. I don't think germ theory was common knowledge at the time.
- skrause 7y agoThere is a great video by CGP Grey which covers exactly that topic: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk
- lurquer 7y agoLung cancer.
- NLips 7y agoMy uneducated guess is that the Europeans lived in much larger communities (in Europe), which is a much better breeding ground for disease. This meant they were much more full of disease than the native Americans. Another uneducated guess is that this is why your pet <insert species name here> doesn't often get sick - they have much less contact with other <insert species name here>s than you do with other humans, contributing to less and slower spread of disease. Please could a pathologist jump in and enlighten me?
- thrower123 7y ago> My uneducated guess is that the Europeans lived in much larger communities (in Europe), which is a much better breeding ground for disease Not a bad guess, but completely wrong. The cities of Mesoamerica or the Andes or the Mississippian culture of North America would have dwarfed most European cities, before they were ravaged by disease. The best explanation I have seen is that almost all domesticable animals in the New World were exterminated early, and so there wasn't anywhere near the cross-species disease potential in the Americas. Old Worlders had domesticated horses, goats, sheep, pigs, cows, a wide array of fowl, camels, dogs, cats, etc, etc. In the Americas, there were turkeys, ducks, llamas & alpacas, and guinea pigs - and not all of those in any one place.
- NLips 7y agoFascinating! Thanks
- CapitalistCartr 7y agoTwo reasons stand out: First, Europeans lived in appalling filth. The sanitary details are well documented elsewhere, the most telling point being that cities of Western Europe only gained population by migration, not internal growth, so bad were the epidemics. It was a millennium-long germ warfare lab. Second, Europeans and Asians lived alongside livestock such as pigs and fowl, and also rats, all notorious breeders of diseases that humans can catch. The interplay of illnesses between humans and animals fed the epidemics.
- astura 7y agoThe New World lacked domesticated animals. https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk
- treis 7y agoThere was enough trade to exchange disease between Europe and Asia. The most well known example would be the plague that devestated Europe originated in East Asia. So the Indian population survived because they were exposed to the same diseases as Europeans and had developed some level of immunity.
- z3phyr 7y ago> There was enough trade to exchange disease between Europe and Asia If you look at the long term history, there was widespread and massive instances of migrations too.
- treis 7y agoGood point. Alexander the Great made it all the way to India before being defeated. Going the other way, Genghis Khan made it from Central Asia to Eastern Europe.
- z3phyr 7y agoThe population was too high and the institutions were robust. The institutions were also loosely identical to the other entities of the old world, and therefor designed to survive imperial institutions of similar kind. This is similar to the British occupying any other large population center / former power in the old world. They won't probably be able to wipe the whole culture out.
- fredley 7y agoFundamentally because they're on the same contiental plate, and had exposure to the same germs, having been infected by the same or similar animals. The decimation of the Americas was largely due to the fact that the ships that arrived brought with them germs to which the natives had no defences at all. This topic is covered extensively in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.
- duxup 7y agoI think it is a valid question to ask how newcomers survived as well.
- Jamwinner 7y agoAre brits somehow so genetically different than indians that they require servants to survive heat? This sure seems to think that is a strong factor. Literally wtf. Tldr; Brits enslaved locals to do their work so they could sweat less. Bravo. Who publishes this tactless drivel?
- C1sc0cat 7y agoYou are not aware of the Large cemeteries full of dead British who went out to India also in many other colonies. Also the British got their foot hold as Indian princes hired British and French mercenaries and had not read Machiavelli
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoIt's not "tactless drivel" to accurately state what actually happened. The British in colonial India were a highly privileged class, and they did a lot worse than just making their punkahwallahs sweat.
- exhilaration 7y agoIs punkahwallahs an actual term? Asking as an ABCD.
- zipwitch 7y agoAerial Board of Control? :-) (Kipling also wrote SF short stories, set in a universe with the aforementioned organization as a world government, for example "As Easy As A.B.C." (1912).) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_Board_of_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_Board_of_Control
- Angostura 7y agoIt is. See also Chaiwallah, Dhobiwallah etc
- Freak_NL 7y agoSeems so: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punkahwallah#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punkahwallah#English I remember hearing it for the first time watching reruns of It Ain't Half Hot Mum.
- amriksohata 7y agoHindu Stuart is well worth reading about
- macewindu 7y ago> Tldr; Brits enslaved locals to do their work so they could sweat less Actually, some Brits such as Churchill wanted to do to India exactly the same as was done to Australia, New Zealand, the Americas or "at least" get to a condition like was done in Apartheid South Africa. There was active efforts to exterminate and genocide the indigenous population in India: large engineered famines. It is just by sheer numbers and thanks to Germany wanting to get in on the colonial trophies triggering a war that India and other South East Asian nations managed to survive. If not for those great wars, and if guys like Churchill had continued their policies it would not be inconceivable that India could have been genocided out and the population replaced with "good European stock" as Churchill would have said.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoCitation needed. The British certainly viewed Indians as expendable, and many decisions during (say) the Bengal Famine made squarely favored military wartime supply at the expense of the local population, but I don't think anybody has seriously proposed that the British intentionally created the famine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Historio...
- bsanr2 7y agoGenocide by convenient happenstance, as a side-effect of deliberate action, is still genocide.
- bsanr2 7y agoThe first modern genocide (if you don't count the Congolese, which most don't but should) was a death march. The Turks didn't try to eliminate the Armenians by shooting or poisoning or slashing them; they simply made them walk, en masse and in horrible conditions, until they died. If you've supplanted an ethnic group's government and redirected resources such that people start dying in horrifically large numbers, that is also a case in which you're committing genocide. Even if you're the Brits.
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- sanmon3186 7y agoApparently Britishers had snow pits for refrigeration in Shimla (a northern hill station) that are being revived now for tourism [1]. [1] https://m.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/snow-pits-to-breathe-life-into-shimla-give-push-to-tourism-859060 https://m.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/snow-pits-to-breathe...
- thrower123 7y agoGin. Lots and lots of gin and tonic. https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/gin-and-tonic-kept-the-british-empire-healthy-the-drinks-quinine-powder-was-vital-for-stopping-the-spread-of-malaria.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/gin-and-tonic-kept-the-...
- jpm_sd 7y agofrom The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: >>> It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N’N-T’N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan ‘tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.
- grabbalacious 7y agoAnd tea. And polo on the maidan. And camp entertainment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAL9HG2p98g#t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAL9HG2p98g#t=5s
- graeme 7y agoWhen he says temperatures were 5-10 degrees lower, he means fahrenheit, correct?
- thedaemon 7y agoThe author is a history professor from the US, I would say, yes you are correct, Fahrenheit.
- vinay427 7y agoIt's also what was used for much of the colonial period in India because of the British, so it's not exactly off-base. Fahrenheit is still often used among older populations in many ex-British colonies.
- lota-putty 7y agoMakes you wonder if Europeans had collaborated wisely/fairly between themselves couple of centuries ago, what kind of world it would've been today. `Greed` got to them before `Envy`, driven by `Pride`
- rdrey 7y agoVery interesting. Also seems to apply to African ex-colonies: I live just below the "Hill Station" neighbourhood of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
- jrochkind1 7y agoUh... but how had the Indians been doing it for thousands of years?
- dspillett 7y agoPlenty of melanin, and habits that didn't involve being out in the direct sun at its hottest probably helped. As for the British officers of the time, I assume a key factor was having people (slaves and/or other subordinates) to order to do work while they stayed out of the direct sun as much as possible, in their relatively luxuriant accommodations.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoDoes melanin help with the heat, though? I thought it just protected from skin cancer.
- uwuhn 7y agoIt does if you spend time in the sun.
- ASalazarMX 7y agoIt doesn't. Fairer skin would reflect more radiation, than darker skin, but it gets burned in the process. I don't think skin color has much of an impact when withstand heat, as sweat is a much stronger temperature regulator. If it's humid heat, it becomes a matter of circulatory efficiency, body mass and plain endurance, as sweat can't evaporate and actually makes it worse. Source: grew up in tropical coastal region.
- jrochkind1 7y agoHow did those servants live in the scorching heat then? But yeah, the article says as much: > Finally, the British had servants. Even common British soldiers had servants. Most of the work the British did in India was mental - writing and reading reports, making decisions, giving orders. They spent a lot of time sitting down in the shade. Nearly all of the physical work that supported British lives in India was done by Indians. Intense physical exertion, in fact, could be deadly; if a British regiment had to perform a forced march, for instance, there was a real likelihood that at least a few of the men would die. It's a weird question. "How does one survive in the heat?" "Well, one just has servants to do all the work." Uh what? Melanin really doesn't have anything to do with it. If it leads to a suggestion that it was somehow appropriate for the British rulers of India to have Indians do all the manual labor, because somehow Indians were "better" at it (while the British were "better" at ruling, naturally), well, of course not. The division of labor in British colonial India had nothing to do with biology, literally nothing.
- brenden2 7y agoHumans are good at acclimating to different climates, it's one of our unique adaptations. The ability to perspire and regulate body temperature in extremes is somewhat unique to humans, as few mammals share this ability. Other mammals do perspire, but only primates and horses sweat as much as we do.
- kuerlenonp 7y agoIt was really hot there!!!
- golover721 7y agoFor every officer living the privileged life described in this article there were dozens of rank and file British troops, who certainly had no servants, or any of the other described comforts and luxuries. No mention of them?
- ad-hominem 7y agoThe last paragraph in this article is as follows: Finally, the British had servants. Even common British soldiers had servants. So maybe read the article before commenting on what is or is not in it?
- sbmthakur 7y agoThe question was specifically about British officers.
- golover721 7y agoFair enough, but the article did mention how much worse the Indian troops under their command had it. So seems odd that they wouldn't mention the British troops as well.
- graeme 7y agoA dead comment mentions even rank and file troops had servants. In previous centuries it was much more common for middle status people to have hired help.
- golover721 7y agoThat is definitely true, however I would hardly classify a private in the army as "middle class".
- known 7y agoBritish had separate Summer and Winter capitals e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooty
- onyva 7y agoWhat a euro centric oblivious type of pseudo academic indulgence. I guess what we need to take from that is that colonialists we’re really busy people, entrepreneurs doing really important things, so this is the kind of perspective into their legacy that we’re missing. You do tend to deal with the heat rather well when someone else is doing the hard work and producing the staff you’re stealing from them. I wonder if there’s a follow-up article on how the nazis kept their uniforms so tidy considering how many ditches and mass graves they stood around.
- wink 7y agoI wonder why you sound so snarky regarding this article. It's not that the author defended them or said anything positive about them (except maybe "I've been there and can relate"). Nothing I read here surprised me, really. And it's not that he didn't mention that the burden was basically shouldered by the people there.
- rishav_sharan 7y agoA lot of folks from countries ravaged by the Britishers really detest the Raj. Its understandable. I myself am from India and i too get a twinge of anger whenever the Raj is mentioned in a non negative way. I guess 70 years aren't enough to forget all that the colonials did.
- wink 7y agoI understand that. But I read it as a relatively neutral and only slightly negative view on historical living circumstances.