FAMINES IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT, 1500 to 1767

1520 (a) [and/or 1521]: Deccan to South India
Documented causes: military plunder
Documented effects: unspecified

Lieut. Col. A.T. Etheridge, "Report on Past Famines in the Bombay Presidency" (1868) [Reports collected by local officials in all districts]

p100 [Sholapoor, by the District Deputy Collector, from "oral enquiries among old inhabitants"]: "A famine of equal extent and duration to that described in the last paragraph [c1460, "... result of want of rain, lasted for a year, and is said to have been felt in the Deccan and Southern India"] is said to have occurred about the year 1520. This is said to have been caused by successions of Military hordes destroying the crops and plundering every thing that came in their way. No measures of relief were adopted. The price at which grain used to sell during the famines mentioned above has not been ascertained."

1521 (a): Malabar Coast

Documented causes: military activity?

Documented effects: voluntary slavery?

"Documentação para a história das missões do padroado português do oriente ... India" (Vol. 1, 1947)

pp450-451: [Report from the (nominal) Bishop of Dume, Cochim (now Kochi, Kerala), 12 Jan 1522] "os pobres se vem tam desesperados que com fome pura vendem as armas aos mouros e depois que nam tem donde de sustentar, vão se ao Balagate [i.e. Balaghat], honde depois que perdem este verdadeyro conhecimento de Deus ..." [this definitely makes 1521 a famine year, so "about the year 1520" in the Sholapoor report above may well just mean 1521]

1521: Afghanistan (NOT Sindh)

Documented causes: n/a

Documented effects: n/a

William Erskine, "A History of India Under the First Two Sovereigns of the House of Taimur" (vol. 1, 1854)

p355: [In 1520-1, Baber, the first of the Mughal emperors, was attempting to starve the city of Kandahar (in modern Afghanistan) into submission:] "… Baber, next season, after marching over the country while the crops were yet on the ground, and carrying off and destroying the harvest, renewed the active siege of the town, and made the blockade closer than ever. Shah Beg, who meanwhile had been pushing on his operations in Sind with great success, and who, in the course of the year, took possession of Tatta itself, and completed the subjugation of the country, finding his affairs in Kandahar reduced to the last extremity, sent an embassy to the Emperor with proposals for peace." [It may be that misinterpretation of this passage has led to the claim by Etheridge, Walford and others that there was a famine in Sind in 1521. Certainly Erskine's separate description of Shah Beg's operations in Sind, on pages 364-75, contains no hint of famine conditions; indeed we learn that in the late spring or summer of 1521:] "Shah Beg … repaired once more to to Sehwan, where he inspected the condition of the fort, which he repaired, and fitted both for defence and as a convenient depot for the families of his followers. He commanded a large quantity of grain to be laid up in store, and enjoined each of his principal adherents to build a house …"