Writing the macabre

Abstract

This chapter examines the politics and rhetoric of recording a famine in early colonial archives. It reads the travel reports of servants of the English and Dutch East India Companies alongside the internal correspondence of the East India Company (EIC) to deconstruct the colonial biases that resulted in an institutional failure in managing the famine. The stakes for reading the Chiattorer Monnontor in the various colonial records such as the EIC's official correspondence and the travel reports of its employees are high, especially in the context of authr's recent interest in colonial famines. The EIC initially looked to gain access to the markets in western India, and thus the first Company ship to reach the Indian subcontinent, the Hector, arrived in Surat as early as 1608. During eighteenth century, the EIC's acquisition of zamindari rights continued, much to the growing alarm of the nawabs of Bengal, who at the time had practically declared their autonomy from a weakening Mughal Empire.