Famine, Contraception and the Origins of Overpopulation: Rethinking Historical Connections
Dr. Mytheli Sreenivas, Associate Prof. History, Women’s Studies, Ohio State
To trace a history of ideas about overpopulation, this paper focuses on two pivotal events in the nineteenth-century British Empire: a massive famine in southern India (1876-1878), and the criminal prosecution of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh (1877) for disseminating information about contraception in England. I consider how each of these events contributed to a popular conviction that India was an overpopulated place, despite the fact that empirically, population growth rates were negligible. Within this context of perceived overpopulation, activists like Annie Besant argued that contraception was a social good, and a sign of the supposed superiority of British civilization. I suggest, finally, that these interconnections between famine, contraception, and overpopulation had important legacies for twentieth century population control programs, and more broadly, for how we might consider the relationship between global population and reproductive justice today.
