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The Chalisa famine of 1783–84 in South Asia follows unusual El Niño events that began in 1780 and caused droughts throughout the region.

Chalisa (literally, "of the fortieth" in Hindustani) refers to the Vikram Samvat calendar year 1840 (1783).

The famine affects many parts of North India, especially the Delhi territories, present-day Uttar Pradesh, Eastern Punjab, Rajputana, and Kashmir, then all ruled by different Indian rulers.

The Chalisa is preceded by a famine in the previous year, 1782–83, in South India, including Madras City and surrounding areas (under British East India Company rule) and in the extended Kingdom of Mysore (under the rule of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan).

Together the two famines may have depopulated many regions of India, including, for example, seventeen per cent of the villages in the Sirkali region of present-day Tamil Nadu, sixty per cent of the villages in the middle Doab of present-day Uttar Pradesh, and over thirty per cent of the villages in the regions around Delhi.

It is thought that up to eleven million people may have died in the two famines.

Laki emits an estimated one hundred and twenty million long tons of sulfur dioxide, about three times the total annual European industrial output in 2006 (but delivered to higher altitudes, hence more persistent), and equivalent to six times the total 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption.

This outpouring of sulfur dioxide during unusual weather conditions causes a thick haze to spread across western Europe, resulting in many thousands of deaths throughout the remainder of 1783 and the winter of 1784.

Russian fur-trading voyages have become longer and more expensive as the traders sail farther east.

Smaller enterprises are merged into larger ones.

During the 1780s, Grigory Shelikhov (also spelled Gregory Shelikov), who has organized commercial trips of the merchant ships to the Kuril Islands and the Aleutian Islands starting from 1775, has begun to stand out as one of the most important traders.

In 1783–1786, he leads an expedition to the shores of Russian America, during which they found the first permanent Russian settlements in North America.

Shelikhov's voyage is done under the auspices of the so-called Shelikhov-Golikov company, the other owner of which is Ivan Larionovich Golikov.

This company will later form the basis on which the Russian-American Company is founded in 1799.

In 1784, Shelikhov arrives in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island with two ships, the Three Hierarchs, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom and the St. Simon.

The indigenous Koniaga, an Alutiiq nation of Alaska natives, harasses the Russian party and Shelikhov responds by killing hundreds and taking hostages to enforce the obedience of the rest.

Having established his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelikhov founds the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska on the island's Three Saints Bay. (Unalaska had existed long before, but it was never considered the permanent base for Russians until Shelekhov’s time).

Shelikhov envisions a continual extension of the Russian maritime fur trade, with trading posts being set up farther and farther along the coast all the way to California.

A major Aleut revolt occurs on Amchitka in May 1784.

According to what Aleut people tell the Japanese castaways, otters have been decreasing year by year and their share in return for the furs is also decreasing as Russian ships stop coming to the island.

The castaways feel that the people have a sense of crisis in their situation.

There have been some negotiations with higher-ranking Aleut people about necessities that the Russians had run out of and that they had given to Aleuts in return for furs.

Two Russians, Stepano and Kazhimov, by Nevizimov's order, kill the chieftain's daughter and Nevizimov's mistress, Oniishin, because Russians had doubted Oniishin’s loyalty to them.

Hundreds of Aleuts start gathering on a mountain that evening and march to the Russians' houses.

Five Russians open fire, and the Aleuts flee, regrouping in another attempted attack the next day.

Yelling, they move more quickly towards the houses, but start to run away again as the Russians open fire.

The Russians, noticing that all the men are absent from the village and are discussing their strategy on a mountain, take hostage around forty women and children hostage.

The Aleuts surrender.

Four high-ranking Aleut people are executed by the Russians.

The Aleuts begin to move after the incident from Amchitka to neighboring islands.

The leader of the Russians, Nevizimov, is jailed after the incident is reported to Russian officials.

Spanish presidios had been established by 1782 at San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco and Santa Barbara, linked by a series of mission stations along the coast.

The center of Russian activity shifts east to Kodiak Island in 1784 and hunting operations are extended into Cook Inlet.

The two empires seem destined to clash, but before direct Russian-Spanish contact is made new powers appear on the Northwest Coast—Britain and the United States.

Famine continues in Japan as three hundred thousand die of starvation.

Germany and other Central European nations report severe flood damage during the spring thaw of 1784.

The emancipation of the Jews has endowed the Habsburg empire's cultural life with new vitality within a short time.

Transylvanian serfs under Ion Ursu, having persuaded themselves that they have the emperor's support, rebel in 1784 against their feudal masters, sack castles and manor houses, and murder about one hundred nobles.

Joseph orders the revolt repressed but grants amnesty to all participants except Ursu and other leaders, whom the nobles torture and put to death before peasants who had been brought to witness the execution.

Aiming to strike at the rebellion's root causes, Joseph emancipates the serfs, annuls Transylvania's constitution, dissolves the Union of Three Nations, and decrees German the official language of the empire.

The Italian adventurer Alessandro Cagliostro, whose history is shrouded in rumor, propaganda, and mysticism, moves in 1784 from Bordeaux to Lyon to found the Mother Lodge of Egyptian Masonry.