Born Then
1817–1824

Life during the First cholera pandemic

Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.

What it meant for ordinary people

Cholera spread out of the Ganges delta in 1817 along trade and military routes, reaching Southeast Asia, China, Persia and the edge of Russia. Nobody knew it came from dirty water. Poor people sharing wells and tanks were hit hardest.

Deaths: hundreds of thousands, most in South and Southeast Asia.

How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.

Around the same time