Third+Plague+in+India

__**Why India?**__ The Third Plague Pandemic devastated much of the world, but no place suffered as greatly as India (Echenburg 431). By 1904, nearly 35,000 deaths were confirmed to be caused by the bubonic plague in India, while over 40,000 people were infected by it (“India: Plague and Cholera” 808). It is theorised that the plague began to spread from a rodent population in the Himalayas between India and China in 1855, or came from Hong Kong and travelled to Bombay via ship (Catanach 132-133). Despite the amount of people the plague was killing, many British doctors denied its presence in India, most likely because it would be bad for trade (“The Plague. Prevalence of The Disease” 1558). Unlike the previous plague pandemics where global trade was limited and slow, the introduction of steam power in India allowed for its rapid spread. In fact, it was because of the railway system in India and steamships that travelled there that the plague was able to become so widespread.
 * [[image:http://www.imagesofasia.com/html/india/images/large/plague-vaccine.jpg width="385" height="252" align="right"]] ||
 * //A man being immunized against the plague in India.// ||


 * [[image:http://geography.sdsu.edu/Research/Projects/BubonicPlague/Bubo/Home_files/BME_1905-1.png width="379" height="241"]] ||
 * //A map of how the plague was spread out in India.// ||

__**Trains**__ India was a British colony at this time, which meant that new technologies were constantly being brought into the sub-continent in order to extract more resources. The railway system that the British introduced to India in the 1850s allowed for the plague to spread quickly through the country, especially among the native population. The British crammed Indians into fourth class cars on the trains meaning that those who were infected with the plague, or even people who had infected fleas on them, would have easily been able to transfer the disease to many other people. With the railways, the plague was able to spread much more easily in India than it could have otherwise, meaning that it caused tens of thousands of people to die.

There were other reasons the introduction of trains to India allowed the plague to spread, however. Indeed, the trains gave the British the ability and the desire to produce a greater amount of export food products such as grain, because they were able to move those crops more efficiently than ever (Catanach 134). What this increased amount of grain meant was that new grain silos and storage facilities needed to be created. These provided the perfect habitats for rats that carried plague infected fleas. Since the plague carrying fleas were able to live so close to humans and their food supply, it would be next to impossible for the disease not to spread to humans quickly and on a large scale. This trend would not have occurred if the British had not brought their railway technology to India, causing Indian agriculturalists to produce so much food that rats that carried infected fleas were drawn to live in the places where that food was stored.

However, the main reason the plague reached every continent is because of steamships. The British needed steamships to export products such as cotton out of India and over to Europe ( Echenburg 431). The industrialisation of the country meant that the amount of raw materials coming out of India was staggering, which required many ships to travel to and from the sub-continent. Every ship that went there increased the chance of spreading the plague to Europe, and therefore the rest of the world. India also traded extensively with nations that bordered on the Red Sea, especially during the nineteenth century when steam power was becoming popular. Cotton was the main good that India traded and it is thought that cotton contributed greatly to the plague’s spread around the world (Catanach 140). It is believed that fleas are very attracted to white or semi-white objects, which means that cotton would be a very popular place for a plague infected flea to live. The steamships allowed vast amounts of cotton to be taken out of India, more than could have ever been taken before steam power. Since fleas are drawn towards white objects like cotton, it was only a matter of time before many plague ridden fleas were brought to other continents such as Africa and Europe.
 * [[image:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pCG_c3Rq788/S6XES7FURjI/AAAAAAAAHAo/RXedUX0s1qg/s1600/British%2BRaj%2B(1904%2B-%2B1906)%2B(23).jpg width="541" height="378" align="left"]] ||
 * // This image shows Indians packing into trains, which was a significant factor in the plague's spread across the country. // ||
 * __Steamships__**
 * [[image:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3335/3526604340_5b806db425.jpg]] ||
 * //A bubonic plague victim in India.// ||

Bubonic plague was able to spread so quickly and widely in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century because of new technologies that were introduced into the plague hotbed, India. Trains and railway networks helped to spread the plague first and foremost in among the native Indian population because of crowded fourth class cars, as well as allowing it to travel over great distances. Trains were also the reason that agricultural productivity increased, which led to rats that carried plague infected fleas to live near humans and their food supply. Trains allowed for a greater amount of export products to be produced, which meant that more steamships had to travel to and from India to pick them up. Cotton carried fleas, grain carried rats, and steamships carried these to Europe, which carried them to the rest of the world. Therefore, without the implementation of steam based technology, the plague would never have been able to spread as far as it did.