Bengal famine of 1770

Topic: Colonial Economy: Land Revenue, Drain, Deindustrialisation · NCERT: Class 8, Ch 4 "The Colonial Era in India"

Meaning

The Bengal famine of 1770 was a famine in Bengal, c. 1770–72. Two years of crop failure started it. The East India Company's harsh cash land revenue made it far worse, and about 10 million people died, nearly one-third of Bengal's population.

It matters because it was the first great famine under Company rule. It shows a pattern seen again and again under colonial rule: the rain failed, but the revenue system turned a bad harvest into mass death.

Explanation

Background: how the Company came to collect Bengal's taxes

• In 1765 the East India Company got the Diwani of Bengal from the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. Diwani was the right to collect the taxes and revenue of Bengal. Clive had been made governor of Bengal [3].
• The Company used this tax money to buy Indian goods for export. So Bengal's taxes paid for the Company's own trade and for more conquest [3].
• The Company wanted high, steady revenue.
• It fixed a cash land revenue demand. This was a fixed money amount, due on a fixed date.
• The peasant had to pay it whether or not the crop came in.

Causes: a natural shock plus a man-made one

• Two years of crop failure hit Bengal first. Famine after a bad monsoon was not new in India.
• The new factor was the revenue system.
• Peasants had to sell grain right after harvest to raise cash. So no grain was kept at home for a bad year.
• Peasants borrowed from moneylenders to pay the tax. This led to debt, and then to loss of land.

• The Company's income stayed steady while villages starved, so officials saw no warning sign.

• The Company did not cut the land tax during the famine. It kept the tax as it was, and in places it raised it.

What happened: the human cost

• Deaths: about 10 million, nearly one-third of Bengal's population.
• Britannica gives the same verdict. British policy made the famine worse through high land revenue demands and strict tax collection while people were starving, and it killed nearly a third of the region's people [3].
• W.W. Hunter, a British official writing about a century later, described the misery. The husbandmen (farmers) "sold their sons and daughters, till at length no buyer of children could be found; they ate the leaves of trees and the grass of the field."

Results and long-term meaning

• Each famine left the village poorer.
• Peasants sold land, cattle and seed-grain to survive.

• So the village began the next bad year with nothing in reserve.

• The 1770 famine was the first in a long series. Counts of severe famines under British rule range from a dozen to over 20. Total colonial-era famine deaths are estimated at 50–100 million.

• Famines had always happened in India, but never on such a scale. Rural India sank into a poverty it never escaped under colonial rule.

Time, place and evidence

• When: c. 1770–72, a few years after the Company got the Diwani in 1765 [3]. This was the early period of Company rule, before the Crown took over.
• Where: Bengal, the province whose revenue the Company had just begun to collect.
• Key people and bodies:
• East India Company: the revenue collector.
• Shah Alam II: the Mughal emperor who granted the Diwani in 1765 [3].
• Clive: governor of Bengal when the Diwani was granted [3].

• W.W. Hunter: a British official whose later account is the standard description of the famine.

• How we know:

• W.W. Hunter's account, written about a century later. It carries weight because it comes from a British official, not an Indian nationalist, so it is hard to dismiss as bias.

• Britannica's summary, which also blames British revenue policy for the death toll [3].

• About the numbers: the figure of about 10 million dead (nearly one-third of the people) is an estimate. No exact count exists.

Don't confuse with

• Great Famine of 1876–78: this came a century later under the Crown, with Lytton as Viceroy. It killed up to 8 million, mostly in the Deccan plateau, not Bengal. The 1770 famine was under Company rule and was in Bengal.
• Bengal famine of 1943: this was also in Bengal, but it happened under Crown rule during the Second World War. Read the year in the question carefully.
• Permanent Settlement (1793): this was a fixed revenue deal with Bengal's zamindars (landlords), made after the 1770 famine. It did not cause the 1770 famine. It belongs to the later story of revenue pressure on Bengal.
• Indian Famine Code (1883): this was the first modern famine rulebook. It grew out of the Famine Commission of 1878–80, more than a century after 1770 [2]. No such code existed in 1770.

Prelims Hooks

• Bengal famine c. 1770–72: about 10 million dead, nearly one-third of Bengal's population.
• The Company kept, and in places raised, the land tax during the famine. It did not cut it. This is a likely "which of the following is correct" trap.
• The Company got the Diwani of Bengal in 1765 from Shah Alam II, after Clive became governor of Bengal [3].
• W.W. Hunter was a British official. His line, the husbandmen "sold their sons and daughters… ate the leaves of trees and the grass of the field", is the standard quote on this famine.
• Order of events: Diwani (1765) → Bengal famine (1770–72) → Great Famine (1876–78) → Indian Famine Code (1883).

Mains Points

• A policy failure, not just a natural disaster. Two bad harvests started the famine. The Company's cash revenue, payable regardless of harvest and kept up or raised during the crisis, turned scarcity into mass death. Britannica says the same: inflated demands and strict collection while people starved [3]. This is the first clear case in a pattern that ran from 1770 to the Great Famine of 1876–78.
• Revenue, drain and famine are one chain. Diwani revenue was used to buy Indian goods for export [3]. Wealth left Bengal while the peasant lost his grain reserve to cash taxes and moneylenders. Famine was the visible end of this extraction. This links the 1770 famine to the drain of wealth and to later revenue systems such as the Permanent Settlement.
• The evidence is strong because of who wrote it. The main account comes from W.W. Hunter, a British official, so the scale of suffering cannot be waved away as nationalist exaggeration. Use the quote in a GS-I answer on the effects of early Company rule.

Related concepts

• Great Famine of 1876-78
• Lord Lytton
• Famine Commissions
• Famine Code
• Colonial famines
• Bengal famine 1943

Read more

• Famines under colonial rule