
How did British officers live in the scorching heat of India? - sbmthakur
http://archive.ph/Zykqs
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jrochkind1
Uh... but how had the Indians been doing it for thousands of years?

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dspillett
Plenty of melanin, and habits that didn't involve being out in the direct sun
at its hottest probably helped.

As for the British officers of the time, I assume a key factor was having
people (slaves and/or other subordinates) to order to do work while they
stayed out of the direct sun as much as possible, in their relatively
luxuriant accommodations.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Does melanin help with the heat, though? I thought it just protected from skin
cancer.

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ASalazarMX
It doesn't. Fairer skin would reflect more radiation, than darker skin, but it
gets burned in the process.

I don't think skin color has much of an impact when withstand heat, as sweat
is a much stronger temperature regulator. If it's humid heat, it becomes a
matter of circulatory efficiency, body mass and plain endurance, as sweat
can't evaporate and actually makes it worse.

Source: grew up in tropical coastal region.

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sanmon3186
Apparently Britishers had snow pits for refrigeration in Shimla (a northern
hill station) that are being revived now for tourism [1].

[1] [https://m.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/snow-pits-to-
breathe...](https://m.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/snow-pits-to-breathe-life-
into-shimla-give-push-to-tourism-859060)

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thrower123
Gin. Lots and lots of gin and tonic.

[https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/gin-and-tonic-kept-
the-...](https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/gin-and-tonic-kept-the-british-
empire-healthy-the-drinks-quinine-powder-was-vital-for-stopping-the-spread-of-
malaria.html)

~~~
jpm_sd
from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

>>>

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance
to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they
primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or
gee-N’N-T’N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations
on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary
between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served at
slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan ‘tzjin-anthony-ks’ which
kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of
them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all
invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other
worlds.

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golover721
For every officer living the privileged life described in this article there
were dozens of rank and file British troops, who certainly had no servants, or
any of the other described comforts and luxuries. No mention of them?

~~~
graeme
A dead comment mentions even rank and file troops had servants. In previous
centuries it was much more common for middle status people to have hired help.

~~~
golover721
That is definitely true, however I would hardly classify a private in the army
as "middle class".

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rdrey
Very interesting. Also seems to apply to African ex-colonies: I live just
below the "Hill Station" neighbourhood of Freetown, Sierra Leone.

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graeme
When he says temperatures were 5-10 degrees lower, he means fahrenheit,
correct?

~~~
thedaemon
The author is a history professor from the US, I would say, yes you are
correct, Fahrenheit.

~~~
vinay427
It's also what was used for much of the colonial period in India because of
the British, so it's not exactly off-base. Fahrenheit is still often used
among older populations in many ex-British colonies.

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brenden2
Humans are good at acclimating to different climates, it's one of our unique
adaptations. The ability to perspire and regulate body temperature in extremes
is somewhat unique to humans, as few mammals share this ability. Other mammals
do perspire, but only primates and horses sweat as much as we do.

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known
British had separate Summer and Winter capitals e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooty)

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acd10j
Why so much concern of British officers in India, Better question would be how
did common Indian population survived British Raj, when American Native
populations did not.

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sct202
Native Americans had no exposure or resistance to smallpox, cholera,
diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, typhoid, tuberculosis,
etc etc. There are a lot of accounts of cities and towns being completely
depopulated very rapidly during the early colonial period just from disease
before there was large scale immigration to the Americas from the old world.

~~~
smnrchrds
Follow-up question: why did the disease exchange only affect native Americans.
Why didn't the _colonists_ perish due to contact with deadly _American_
diseases they had no exposure or resistance to? Why were the European diseases
so deadly to Americans, but not vice versa?

~~~
rhcom2
Interesting question. I found this:
[http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-
ameri...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-americans-
didnt-wipe-europeans-diseases/)

Fun tidbit:

> But contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t all one sided. It’s believed that
> one Native American disease did slip on to the European ships and sailed
> onward to Europe doing some major damage in the process. That disease was
> syphilis.

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BerislavLopac
It is one theory, but things are not completely clear:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis#Origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis#Origin)

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amriksohata
Hindu Stuart is well worth reading about

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onyva
What a euro centric oblivious type of pseudo academic indulgence. I guess what
we need to take from that is that colonialists we’re really busy people,
entrepreneurs doing really important things, so this is the kind of
perspective into their legacy that we’re missing. You do tend to deal with the
heat rather well when someone else is doing the hard work and producing the
staff you’re stealing from them.

I wonder if there’s a follow-up article on how the nazis kept their uniforms
so tidy considering how many ditches and mass graves they stood around.

~~~
wink
I wonder why you sound so snarky regarding this article.

It's not that the author defended them or said anything positive about them
(except maybe "I've been there and can relate"). Nothing I read here surprised
me, really. And it's not that he didn't mention that the burden was basically
shouldered by the people there.

~~~
rishav_sharan
A lot of folks from countries ravaged by the Britishers really detest the Raj.
Its understandable. I myself am from India and i too get a twinge of anger
whenever the Raj is mentioned in a non negative way. I guess 70 years aren't
enough to forget all that the colonials did.

~~~
wink
I understand that. But I read it as a relatively neutral and only slightly
negative view on historical living circumstances.

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lota-putty
Makes you wonder if Europeans had collaborated wisely/fairly between
themselves couple of centuries ago, what kind of world it would've been today.

`Greed` got to them before `Envy`, driven by `Pride`

