History is messy. Usually, when we talk about the British in India, people jump straight to the Victorian era or the World Wars. But the Bengal Famine of 1770 is where the real, dark shift happened. It wasn’t just a "natural disaster." It was a corporate catastrophe. Basically, you had a private company—the East India Company (EIC)—running a massive country like a high-yield investment fund.
It failed. Miserably.
Ten million people died. That’s about one-third of the population of Bengal at the time. It’s a number so large it feels fake, but the reality was corpses clogging the streets of Murshidabad and Calcutta. Imagine a silence so thick it covers entire villages because nobody is left to even make a sound.
What Really Caused the Bengal Famine of 1770?
People like to blame the weather. Sure, the monsoon failed in 1769. Crops withered. If you're a farmer and it doesn't rain, you're in trouble. But India had seen droughts before. The difference in 1770 was the policy.
The East India Company had just secured the Diwani rights in 1765. This meant they were the official tax collectors for the Mughal Emperor. They weren't interested in governing; they were interested in revenue. Even as the stalks turned brown in the fields, the tax collectors didn't back off. In fact, they raised taxes.
While people were eating leaves and grass, the EIC was busy making sure their shareholders back in London got their dividends. It’s honestly sickening when you look at the ledger books.
The Forced Shift to Cash Crops
One of the big issues was what was actually being grown. The EIC pushed farmers to grow opium and indigo. Why? Because you can't eat indigo, but you can sell it for a massive profit in Europe. This took away land that usually grew rice.
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When the drought hit, there was no food surplus. The "buffer" was gone.
Greed on a Global Scale
Warren Hastings, who became the Governor-General, later admitted that the tax collection in 1771—the year after the worst of the famine—was actually higher than the years before it. Think about that for a second. Millions are dead, the workforce is decimated, and the Company still manages to squeeze more money out of the survivors.
It wasn't just neglect. It was predatory.
The EIC also banned "hoarding." This sounds good on paper, right? You don't want rich guys sitting on grain. But in reality, the Company’s own agents were the ones cornering the market. They bought up all the rice and sold it back at prices no starving peasant could afford.
It was a monopoly on survival.
The Reports from the Ground
English officials on the ground were writing letters back home. They weren't all monsters. Some were horrified. They described the "melancholy scenes" of mothers abandoning children because they couldn't feed them. But the board in London? They were looking at spreadsheets.
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John Shore, a high-ranking official, noted that the "calamity" was worsened because the Company didn't have a plan. They didn't have a soul, either.
Why This Matters Today (And What Most People Get Wrong)
A lot of people think the Bengal Famine of 1770 was just an "unfortunate event" of the pre-modern world. It wasn't. It was the first major sign that a corporation should never, ever be in charge of a nation’s welfare.
There's a debate among historians. Some, like Rajat Datta, argue that the market was already fragile. Others, like William Dalrymple in his book The Anarchy, place the blame squarely on the EIC’s corporate violence. Honestly, both can be true. The weather was the spark, but the Company's greed was the gasoline.
You’ve got to realize that the Bengal economy never truly recovered for decades. The "Golden Bengal" that early travelers described was replaced by a landscape of jungle overgrowing abandoned towns.
The Impact on the West
Funny enough, the famine almost bankrupted the East India Company. Since everyone was dead, there was no one left to pay taxes eventually. The British government had to bail them out. This led to the Tea Act of 1773.
And what did that lead to? The Boston Tea Party.
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So, in a weird, butterfly-effect kind of way, the famine in Bengal helped trigger the American Revolution. History is weird like that.
Lessons We Can't Forget
We talk about "Too Big to Fail" today. The EIC was the original version of that. When a company is more powerful than a government, people die.
If you want to understand modern India, or even modern corporate ethics, you have to start here. You have to look at the bones in the soil of 1770.
Actionable Steps for History Enthusiasts and Researchers
If you're looking to actually understand this period beyond a Wikipedia summary, here's how to dig deeper:
- Read Primary Sources: Look up the Annals of Rural Bengal by W.W. Hunter. He wrote it in the 19th century, but he used EIC records that are chillingly direct.
- Visit the Archives: If you're ever in Kolkata, the National Library has incredible records from the 1770s that show the day-to-day tax logs during the famine.
- Analyze Economic Policy: Study the "Drain Theory" popularized by Dadabhai Naoroji. It explains how wealth was siphoned out of India, making famines like this inevitable.
- Support Modern Food Security: Use this historical context to advocate for global food bank initiatives. Understanding that famine is often a "distribution and policy" problem rather than a "scarcity" problem is key to preventing it today.
The Bengal Famine of 1770 wasn't an accident. It was a choice. By studying it, we learn to recognize the signs of systemic neglect before the silence starts again.