Bengal Cash Cow for Colonial plundering and the Famine of 1770

• The onset of Bengal famine

• Bengal Famine: Its causes

• The Role of BEIC Behind Bengal famine

• The Famine and its impact on Bengal

"Starvation is the characteristic of some people having not enough food to eat. It's not the characteristic of their
being not enough food to eat“ - Amartya Sen,

The Onset of Bengal Famine of 1770

• The battle of Plassey in 1757, the British defeated the then Nawab Sirajuddaula, and
plundered the Bengali treasury.

• The subsequent treaty gained them the Diwani in 1765, that is the taxation rights: in
effect, the Company became the ruler of Bengal.

• The Bengal famine was a catastrophic famine that affected the lower Gangetic
plain of India in between 1769 and 1773.

• The famine claimed an estimated 10 million people, approximately one-third of the

population at the time.

• The famine occurred in the territory which was called Bengal including current West
Bengal, Bangladesh, and parts of Assam, Orissa, Bihar, and Jharkhand.

• Among the worst affected areas were Birbhum and Murshidabad in Bengal,
and Tirhut, Champaran and Bettiah, in Bihar.
• It is usually attributed to a combination of weather and the policies of the BEIC.

• The start of the famine has been attributed to a failed monsoon in 1769 that caused
widespread drought and two consecutive failed rice crops.

• There was partial failure of crops in Bengal in December 1768 owing to scarcity of rains.

• In the early months of 1769, the price of grain rocketed. There was not a drop of rain for
six months.

• There was complete failure of the December crops of 1769.

• Rice was sold in Murshidabad at 3 seers per rupee and sometimes grain could not be
purchased.

• Black plague raged in almost every part of the country.

• There was an outbreak of smallpox in Murshidabad

• There was partial failure of crops in Bengal in December 1768 owing to scarcity
of rains.

• In the early months of 1769, the price of grain rocketed. There was not a drop of
rain for six months.

• There was complete failure of the December crops of 1769.

• Rice was sold in Murshidabad at 3 seers per rupee and sometimes grain could
not be purchased.

• Black plague raged in almost every part of the country.

• There was an outbreak of smallpox in Murshidabad

• By early 1770 there was starvation, and, by mid 1770, deaths from starvation were
occurring on a large scale.

• “The husbandmen sold their cattle, they sold their implements of agriculture, they
devoured their seed grain and they sold their sons and daughters till at length no
buyer of children could be found”.

• There were also reports of the living breastfeeding on the bodies of the dead in the
middle of that year.

The Role of BEIC Behind Bengal famine

• The famine is often ascribed to the British East India Company’s policies in Bengal.

• The poor infrastructure investments, devastation from war, and exploitative tax revenue
maximization policies of the BEIC crippled the economic resources of the rural population.

• Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen describes it as a man-made famine, noting that no previous famine
had occurred in Bengal in that century.

• As a trading body, BEIC’s first goal was to maximize its profits through land taxation and trade
tariffs.

• The land tax was raised by 3 to 4 times than before.

• In the first years of the rule of the British East India Company, the total land tax income was
doubled and most of this revenue went out of the country.

• As the famine approached its height, in April of 1770, the Company announced that land tax for
the following year was to be increased by 10%.
 • The company is also criticized for forbidding the "hoarding" of rice.

• This prevented traders and dealers from putting in reserves that in other times
would have served the population in lean periods.

• By the time of the famine, monopolies in grain trading had been established by the
Company and its agents.

• BEIC had no plan for dealing with the grain shortage, and actions were only taken
while it affected the mercantile and trading classes.

• Smallpox and other diseases further took their toll of the population.

• As a result of the famine large areas were depopulated and returned to jungle, as
the survivors migrated in mass in a search for food.

• Many cultivated lands were abandoned: much of Birbhum, for instance, returned to
jungle and was virtually inaccessible for decades afterwards

• For the first 15 years after the famine, depopulation steadily increased.

• The death of children in the famine meant that the old died off without any
replacement.

• The desertification was so huge that Lord Cornwallis was to announce in 1789 that one-
third of the Company’s territories in Bengal was a jungle inhabited by wild beasts.

• In Birbhum, out of 6,000 rural communities, only 4,000 survived in 1771.

• However, the attempt to collect land tax continued with the most harsh methods
resulting in farmers being thrown into debt prisons.

• By the end of the famine, ‘social violence’ was on the increase in these frontier areas of
Bengal.
• By the end of the famine period the disorders could be called a period of rebellion.

• In 1761, the rajas of Burdwan, Birbhum and Midnapur had combined their forces and
moved against the English.

• Land revenue decreased by 14% during the affected year, but recovered rapidly.

• The first governor-general of British India, Warren Hastings, acknowledged that

"violent" tax collection after 1771 that revenues earned by the Company were higher
in 1771 than in 1768.

• The profit of the Company increased from 15 million rupees in 1765 to up to 30 million
rupees in 1777.

• The famine of 1770 was the biggest calamity of the eighteenth century in terms of the
enormous loss of life and the extent of human suffering involved.

• The core areas of central Bengal were devastated and these included Murshidabad,
Rajshahi and Hoogly.

• The mostly affected were the landless laborers, artisans and boatmen who were
without means of putting away stores of grain.

• The peasants were seriously affected because of shortage of human labor due to
starvation deaths and lack of cattle for cultivation.

• Population was also decreased because of lack of births due to malnutrition and
deaths among young girls.
Two factories located on the Ganges manufactured opium (BBC, 2019)