Doji bara (Skull) Famine and the Great El Nino of 1789-1793
- Date
- 1791-1792 (drought from 1789)
- Category
- Environment & climate
- Region
- South Asia (Deccan, Gujarat, Marwar, Hyderabad, Madras Presidency)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
The Doji bara, or Skull, famine devastated the Indian subcontinent between roughly 1789 and 1792, triggered by one of the most severe El Nino events in recorded history, which scholars date to 1789-1793 (with associated climatic disruption persisting to about 1795).
The El Nino caused the South Asian summer monsoon to fail for several consecutive years, producing catastrophic drought across Hyderabad, the Southern Maratha country, the Deccan, Gujarat, Marwar, and parts of the Madras Presidency, including the Northern Circars. An estimated 11 million people perished from starvation and accompanying disease epidemics, making it one of the deadliest famines ever documented; the name Doji bara, recorded around Bijapur, means Skull famine, because the unburied dead were so numerous that the ground was strewn with skulls. The Scottish East India Company surgeon William Roxburgh kept pioneering meteorological records of the drought, later used by historian Richard H. Grove to reconstruct the event's global reach, which included low Nile floods and famine in Egypt, drought in southern Africa, and the Settlement Drought across eastern Australia in 1791-1795. The episode stands as a landmark case study in the world-historical impact of extreme ENSO climate variability.
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Empires active in 1791-1792 (drought from 1789)
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
Related environment & climate events
- Laki Fissure Eruption and the Mist Hardships Famine8 June 1783 – 7 February 1784
- The Great Lisbon Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fire1 November 1755
- Great Bengal Famine of 17701769–1770
- 1556 Shaanxi EarthquakeJanuary 23, 1556
- Deforestation and Ecological Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)c. 1600 CE
- Eruption of Huaynaputina19 February 1600
Further reading
The wider story
A New Green History of the World
The classic accessible account of how environment and climate have shaped human history.
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