On the arrival of the 86th Regiment in January 1858, the city was disarmed, when 25,000 arms chiefly matchlocks and swords were surrendered. British crown rule (1857–1947) From 1857 to 1865, it was a time of great prosperity. The municipal government was established in 1858. The American Civil War (1863–1865) helped the economy of the city. The railway connecting Ahmedabad with Bombay was opened in 1864. Ahmedabad grew rapidly, becoming an important center of trade and textile manufacturing. The city was greatly damaged by floods in 1868 and in 1875. In 1877, the city suffered from fire. On 27 January 1877, there was an explosion of gunpowder in a Bohora's shop. This shop, in which were more than 500 pounds of gunpowder, was about ten at night found to be on fire. The gunpowder exploded burning five shops and killing eighty-eight people. Two months later, on the night of 24 March 1877, a fire broke out in the chief enclosure, pol, of the Sarangpur area. The street was very narrow and lined with four-story high houses. It was only with the greatest difficulty that the fire engines could be brought to play on the fire. Military help was called in and by ten next morning the fire was got under, but not until ninety-four houses had been burned and property worth £60,000 (Rs. 6,00,000) destroyed. In 1878, the lower classes suffered from high prices of food-grains while the upper classes from the dullness of trade and losses in Bombay mills. The old mercantile and industrial elite, with their relative sophistication in matters of industry, trade, and financing, were well poised to expand under British rule, using their own financing for new technology, represented by British machinery. Instead of just a few merchants introducing new industrial machinery, as elsewhere in India, in Ahmedabad the mercantile class as a whole supported the new techniques, even though hand spinners and handloom weavers, as well as female spinners in the outlying communities had their traditional operations upset as a result. They and others were recruited into the new manufacturing plants. The merchant class tended to support the British, thinking the rule provided more security than under the Marathas, lower taxes (including lower octroi), and more property rights. Unlike most other areas of India, British rule meant no major upsetting of the community's traditional social system, although the traditional peasant landowning class, the Banias and